


A Grand Finale

by haunter_ielle



Series: Bound Until Death [2]
Category: Dark Brotherhood - Fandom, Elder Scrolls, Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
Genre: Angst, Cicero has a lot of issues, Dark Brotherhood - Freeform, F/M, More angst, prepare your tear ducts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-02
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2018-09-27 22:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 18
Words: 39,903
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10054418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haunter_ielle/pseuds/haunter_ielle
Summary: After the fall of the Dawnstar Sanctuary, Cicero revisits the important moments of his life.This story is technically the sequel to Whispers in the Dark, but it picks up where Before the Storm left off. Sorry in advance.





	1. Cicero is Dead!

**Author's Note:**

> Yo what it do I'm back again.
> 
> Sorry I haven't worked on Tale of Tongues. I literally hate Karalissa right now. 
> 
> Have some DB fic instead!

Cicero is dead.

 

Cicero is born!

 

The laughter had filled me again, cresting the edge of my sanity like some accent piece meant for the center of a table. A table, set for five because Arabella and I had three children together. They were all girls, to my distaste, but I loved them anyway. They didn’t look like me; they looked like her.

I laughed heartily because that never happened. There was no table because there was no Arabella. She was gone, gone gone gone with the rest of the sanctuary. I watched her die, I watched her burn when the flames spread down the ladder to the crypt. I didn’t reach for her, didn’t help her. I pushed her in, saw her dress go up in flames and spread to the tender flesh beneath. She screamed, oh gods she screamed.

No, that didn’t happen. It never happened.

_ It did happen. Cicero killed the Listener. Cicero burned the Listener. _

I didn’t! I didn’t kill the Listener. She was here, sitting across from me and watching me because I must be saying something. It wasn’t her, though, because my Arabella had light eyes, not lifeless gray.

_ She died. She bled. Cicero saw it. _

No! She healed herself. She didn’t burn, she didn’t bleed.

_ She slit her wrists with your dagger, and left herself to bleed. You didn’t save her. She was so near to death, and Cicero did nothing. _

I couldn’t! I was tied, bound to a beam because Babette thought I would kill her. Because you told me to kill her!

_ And you didn’t obey because you’re unworthy. Lowly, cowardly, and unworthy. _ I shook my head, shutting my eyes and covering my ears, as if that would be of some use even though the laughter was within.  _ Kill her now. She wants to die. She wants to be killed. _

“Shut up!” I yelled to it. “Stop talking!”

_ Do it. _

“No! I won’t!”

_ Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. Do it. _

“No!” I slammed my fists against the side of my head, willing for the silence to return. “Get out of my head!”

She moved, sort of staggering toward me. I tensed, looking up at her around my own hands because I knew she was angry with me. I knew she hated me. She had to, because why wouldn’t she? As she stepped over the blood that stained the floor, her eyes never left mine.

But they weren’t her eyes. Arabella had light eyes, didn’t she? These eyes were gray, but there was no life behind them, the area around the irises too bloodshot to be human. But this had to be her, because there was no way out. I stared at her face as she lowered herself to sit before me, crossing her legs and leaning toward me. Her chin was right, sort of round like the rest of her features. The lips were right, because I knew those lips better than I knew any other lips. The nose was wrong, a little different than before, just there, in the middle. The eyebrows, right, dark like her hair and furrowed in concern.

But still, her face wasn’t hers. It was wrong somehow, through the healed mounds of bones that had been broken beneath the surface. I tried to remember how she looked before, to remind myself of how she looked before for comparison, but I couldn’t. What did she look like? What did I look like?

I touched her face, noting that the scars were right. The dark one on her neck hadn’t moved, and neither had the one on her cheek, left by that foul contract so many years ago. My favorite scars, the three that decorated her left eyebrow, were still exactly where they were supposed to be, and I ran my thumb over them. The raised flesh felt familiar under the pulse of my thumb, and I almost smiled, because for a moment, it was like we were somewhere better. Somewhere good.

She had always been covered in scars. Her life was covered in scars, left by people who had left her, in one way or another. And even though there were some scars, like the ones on her eyebrow, that I was very fond of, there were others that I hated. And I hated them because they were the ones I caused.

There was a scar running across her left arm, near the shoulder, because I’d lost myself and cut her with a knife to see if she was real in her bedroom so long ago. There was a little scar near the corner of her mouth, where I’d hit her because the laughter wouldn’t stop screaming until I did. There was a bad one on the side of her face, just covered by her hair unless she pulled it back the way she used to. She wouldn’t tell me how I gave it to her, but it was jagged like a blade’s cut. She wouldn’t tell me a lot of the things I’d done, and I didn’t know if I was grateful for that or not.

The scars on her wrists were mine too, and I knew that. She could paint it any way she wanted too, but they belonged to me. If I hadn’t hurt her, hadn’t done what the laughter said, she wouldn’t have been desperate to leave me, to leave the crypt, to leave the world. I stared at the scars, running from the edge of her palms to the middle of her forearm, dark in color compared to her pale flesh.

I ran my thumbs over the scars, and though she usually looked at my face, she couldn’t. She watched my movement as I traced the marks, watched my fingers graze the freshly healed flesh. I looked up at her, trying to measure her expression, but unable to.

“I’m sorry, Arabella.” I said, my voice low because I didn’t want to wake Babette. I usually didn’t care if she was sleeping or not, but it had been a long night, the longest night of our entire stay in captivity, and Babette had taken a lot of the repercussions.

She shook her head, her gaze wandering back to meet mine. “Stop apologizing for something you didn’t cause.” The voice was hers, too. The same honey-worded voice she’d always used. “Don’t place the blame on yourself, Cicero. It’s not yours to take.”

“I thought you were gone.” I mumbled, kissing the skin of her wrists. “I thought…I didn’t know you had the will to do something like this.”

But that wasn’t really true, because I’d always worried for her. I’d always worried that one night, I wouldn’t wake to her screaming because she’d decided to take her life rather than endure another night terror. I’d always worried that I’d find her on the floor of her room hyperventilating the way she used to, and giving up because the struggle for air was too difficult. I’d always worried that she’d really think about the things that had happened to her, and she’d decide that she didn’t want to exist in a world where the bad did.

I would have done the deed, too. I knew that in the deepest parts of me, and I think she knew it, too. I would have laid on the ground, sobbing and screaming the way I had until Babette freed me, and then I would have gone with Arabella to the Void because I’d follow her anywhere, and I’d promised her that a long time ago. But more so, I couldn’t live without her, and I wouldn’t.

“I’m here.” she said. “I didn’t go anywhere.”

“But you wanted to.” I reminded, both her and myself. I held her hands, wishing I could cradle her against my chest, but knowing I couldn’t. “You wanted to leave because I’ve killed you down here. I’ve killed everything good, and there’s no way to resurrect it.”

“Necromancy is not a difficult art to master.” she said quietly, an eyebrow raised. “I’m sure you could learn it in a week or two. Three, at most.”

I blinked at her because I knew it was a joke, but I hadn’t been kidding. I destroyed everything about her. Everything good, everything unique and kind and giving, I’d pounded into submission with my bare hands, and there was no bringing it back. There was no way to apologize for blindly obeying the orders of the laughter that bounced around inside my skull, and so I didn’t. Because I couldn’t. Because I didn’t want her to forgive me, and I knew she would.

Without thinking, I said what I felt. “I love you.” It was a whisper, as if I were uttering a hex that would destroy us both. And it was a hex, because we were toxic together. “I can’t stop loving you. I won’t.”

“I know.” she said after a moment. “And I love you, too. You know I do.”

“You shouldn’t.” I said quickly. I released her hands, setting them back in her lap. “You should hate me. You shouldn’t love me.”

“I shouldn’t.” she agreed, nodding to me. “But I do.”

“Don’t love me, Arabella.” I said, leaning away from her grasp when she reached for me.

She furrowed her brow, her dark eyes fixed on mine, identical in every way. “Why are you allowed to love me, but I’m not allowed to love you?”

“It’s not sane to love someone who hurts you.” I told her. “It’s not sane to love someone who’s tried to kill you.”

“I never claimed to be sane. I believe I’m actually quite mad.” she reminded me, and though her tone was light, her words were serious. She touched my face, tracing the lines it wore. “And I’ve hurt you, too. Never forget that I’ve hurt you too.”

I did remember. I remembered that even though I’d overpowered her many times, she didn’t always submit. She ran her fingertips over the raised flesh of my cheek, a dark scar that I’d never seen because there were no mirrors down here. It stretched from my cheekbone to the corner of my mouth, and I knew that because I traced it often. She had swiped at me when I’d hit her, and though it wasn’t the only time she’d fought back, it was the first time she made contact.

“Nothing compared to what I’ve done to you.” I concluded, and she didn’t argue. Though she would never, ever, say that I’d done worse out loud, it was an unspoken agreement.

She nodded, a solemn nod that told me what I didn’t want to hear, and yet she repeated it out loud. “I love you anyway.”

She leaned toward me, pressing her mouth against mine gently at first, and though I knew it was wrong, my hand found its place against the side of her face. My fingers tangled in her hair as we exchanged fierce kisses, ones that shouldn’t have been shared but were because we were both mad, and we loved each other.

But we shouldn’t, and so I jerked away from her, shaking my head and shutting my eyes. She never responded, never said anything, but she stood from the ground and walked across the room, returning to her original spot across from me.

And all I wanted to do was sit with her. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to entwine our fingers and kiss the back of her hand. I wanted to study her face while she slept in my arms. I wanted to count the breaths she took, count the number of times she blinked. I wanted to hear her laugh, because it was my favorite sound and I dreamed of hearing it. I wanted her to be mine; I wanted nothing more than for her to be mine again.

And even though she was the only thing I wanted, I couldn’t have her. I wanted what I had no right to take, because I’d done so much to hurt her. What I had told her so long ago, after our fight in Whiterun, was absolutely true: we were toxic together, and I believed nothing more than that. We were destructive. Everything we did was to hurt each other.

But I still loved her. I loved the crooked smile she gave me when I said something she thought was funny. I loved the sound of her voice, the way her accent skewed words like ‘sanctuary’ and ‘together’ and ‘Listener’. I loved the way her hair smelled, loved the way it felt in my hands when I reached out to touch it.

And even in the crypt, when she never smiled and she hardly spoke and she was as dirty and disgusting and unkempt as I was, I loved her. I loved her more, down in the dark, because she was the only thing I had left. But I was destroying her. I had pushed her to the edge, and I never wanted to do that again. I would never listen to the laughter again. I would let it scream and pound against my skull if it meant she would be safe from me. I would leave her forever if I couldn’t. I would go as far away as I could, where she couldn’t find me, and I would never come back to her. I would never let myself hurt her again, and if I had to cut off my hands to ensure that, I would.

And she watched me with those new eyes, her gaze fixed on me. She never slept if Babette was asleep. They didn’t trust me, didn’t trust the laughter, and they were smart not to. She waited for Babette to rouse to sleep, and then she slept facing away from me near the foot of the coffin. It was instinctual to hold her when she slept, and it took all of my strength not to bother her.

Instead of watching her, watching me, I rested my head against the wall and begged for sleep.

And it came, sweet and silent.

Dreamless, in every sense of the word, because I was the nightmare.

 

Nightmares had plagued me for a long time, both when I was asleep and when I was awake. It was difficult not to dream about a life where things were good, and to me, those were the nightmares. It was a nightmare to fall asleep and dream of life away from the crypt, to dream that I was a father or anybody’s loved one, to dream that I was Mother’s Listener or her most worthy assassin. In the same sense, it was a nightmare to wake up and still be in the crypt below the fallen Dawnstar sanctuary. To watch Arabella count and recount and lose count of her actions, and start over from the beginning. To watch Babette talk to herself, repeat things that had happened because she was starting to forget, and she didn’t want to. To listen to their screams when I came out of the fog that blurred my self-control, to see their faces when I came back, the horror that they wore.

A nightmare is what I woke to. I watched in curiosity, as I always did, as Arabella paced the perimeter of the room, her footsteps equidistant and timed perfectly so that the sound was pleasing to her ears. She always had to get to exactly four hundred and sixty-seven steps, and if she lost count, she started over. It had become her daily activity, one to occupy her mind when it wandered or when she began to see things.

She’d had hallucinations for a long time, near constantly since the door was sealed. Babette and I had no idea until Arabella broke down one day, screaming at whoever she saw and begging for them to stop talking to her, to leave her alone. She never said a name, and she never told us who it was. I had a sinking suspicion, more of an assumption, really, that it was Veezara, but I never said anything about it. It drove her mad to acknowledge the presence out loud, and she rarely let on that it was even there. But every once in awhile, when she thought no one was watching, her eyes would catch something I couldn’t see, and she would nod or shake her head, as if answering some sort of question unheard by anyone but her.

Babette was mumbling as she scribbled on the wall before her. She had taken a tally of the days, and she was using a crumbling piece of charcoal to carve the five hundred and thirteenth mark. Before the line was fully drawn, she whipped her head around.

“Stop pacing.” she muttered, staring at Arabella.

Arabella looked up at her, pausing her steps and cocking her head to the side. “I’m only at three hundred and four. I have one hundred and sixty-three to go.”

“Stop. Pacing.” Babette repeated, her voice low. “The clicking is driving me insane.”

“Clicking.” Arabella mumbled with a shrug before she continued to walk. “I would describe it as more of a patter. Seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven…”

_ Make her stop. _ the laughter within me mumbled, an order that I was doomed to follow. I shook my head as discreetly as I could manage.

“‘Patter’ is defined as a repeated light tapping sound.” Babette grumbled. “Your description is redundant.”

_ Make her stop. _ the laughter cooed, the order becoming more and more appealing as Arabella’s boots clicked against the ground.  _ Silence her. _

“Seventeen, eighteen, nineteen…I like that word. ‘Redundant’.” Arabella passed me, stepping over my outstretched legs. “Define that.”

Babette huffed. “Able to be omitted without loss of meaning or function. Unneeded. Uncalled for.” She shot another glance at Arabella. “Superfluous.”

Arabella smirked. “I like that one, too. Thirty-one, thirty-two…”

“Superfluous: unnecessary, especially through being more than enough.” Babette watched Arabella make another lap around the room in silence.

The clicking of her heeled boots echoed through my empty head, and I clenched my jaw to restrain myself from screaming. The laughter began to do more than speak, a low giggle forming in the base of my skull and reverberating off of my brain. I hated it, hated the clicking. Hated the laughter.

_ Silence her. _

I focused on my breathing. I took rhythmic inhales and exhales, making them as loud as possible to drown out the sound of the laughter. I couldn’t hurt her, not again. Not after the last time…

_ Silence her. _

Clicking! Clicking! Clicking! Focus on anything but the clicking. The frayed edges of her dress dragged against the floor as she moved, and that sound became audible too. Click and drag and click and drag. The laughter laughed and I felt myself beginning to twitch.

She was about to pass me again. “Sixty-four, sixty-five…” She paused. “What are you thinking about?” She continued. “Sixty-seven, sixty-eight, sixty-nine…”

She had skipped a step, but I didn’t tell her, lest she start from the beginning again. She was one her fourth go-around, and this was the closest she’d come to completion. I scratched the hair on my face, which I didn’t particularly enjoy having, but there was no way to shave it. The sound of the scratch was too loud, so I stopped. 

“I’m wondering if Babette could define the word ‘vexatious’ for me.” I lied, hoping for something to distract her.

Arabella stopped, looking over her shoulder at me for a moment. Her face had fallen, and she shook her head as she spoke. “That’s the High King’s word.”

I nodded. “I’m well aware.”

“Vexatious,” Babette muttered angrily. “Causing or tending to cause annoyance.”

I pursed my lips at Arabella, the laughter’s voice whispering little lines into my ear. “Vexatious. The clicking is vexatious.”

She stared at me for a moment, giving me a cautious once-over before she set her jaw and took another heavy step. She knew not to test me, because I was difficult to control, but still, she did. For just a moment, I hated myself for that, for knowing I terrified her. I hated myself, and I hated her for testing me anyway. I silently begged her not to move, to stop the clicking, but that was pushed away when I saw the fog.

The fog came often, and sometimes didn’t leave for days. I frequently wondered why I was the only one who saw it. I stood when it became too thick to see through, squinting through the thick air and taking a step forward, the heels of my own boots clicking against the pavement as I moved.

I walked for some time, the clicking echoing all around me. I paused when I realized I must be walking in a circle, because though I’d walked an extended distance, I was still exactly where I once was. I flinched as the sound of my own voice, my own scream, cracked like thunder through the foggy room.

“Silence her!”

I covered my ears, but the screams of women came soon after. My brow furrowed as I tried to make sense of it, the clenching of my fingers and the pressure against my upper arm. I was distracted, just for a moment, when I saw him stand before me. 

He was a bit taller than me, a bit slimmer. His face was shadowed, but his attire was easily identifiable. Crushed velvet in a deep shade of sanguine, the trim of his coat in black and gold. His shoes curved into a point, a soft black leather that kept his footsteps silent as he approached me. I almost smiled at the sight of my old friend, my dearest companion, my greatest enemy.

But I knew what this meant, and so I shook my head as the pressure in the palms of my hands become more intense. “I didn’t want to hurt her.” I said quietly, and it was true. He was in control. He gave me no choice.

“I know.” he said, taking a slow stride into the little light that was left. When illuminated, it became evident that his face was identical to mine. He was me. I was him. I am the laughter. “You didn’t. But I did.”

The fog became too thick, the screams too loud.

And the world became black. 


	2. Cicero is Born!

I was nine when my brother taught me how to fish. Our father was always too busy to take us, so one day, Julius surprised me with a fishing pole and took me to the lake near our father’s farm. Though I wasn’t at all good at sitting patiently and waiting for fish, like he was, I was very good at killing the worms when I baited the hooks, and so he let me do that.

My brother was older than me by seven years, and there was a lot he’d taken upon himself to teach me. Our father was a farmer, and he spent the majority of his time working in the fields because it was our only way of making money. Julius was a farm hand, and our father was so proud of him. I knew why, because Julius was a good man. He was sixteen years old, and he was smart and handsome and well-spoken, and he’d already found a woman he wanted to marry. Julius had everything about his life figured out down to what shoes he wanted to wear when he died, and I wanted to be just like him.

I wasn’t, though, and that bothered my father. He’d never outwardly expressed that he didn’t love me, but something always told me that he loved Julius more. It didn’t bother me, though, because I had my mother’s love, and that was enough.

Julius nudged me with his shoulder. “Bait another one, Cicero. We’ll bring Mother back a feast, tonight.”

I sighed. “ _ You’ll _ bring Mother a feast. I’m no good at fishing.”

“You’re good at baiting the hooks, little brother.” he said, a smile on his face as the wind tussled his short, red hair. “You can’t catch a fish if you have nothing to lure it in.”

I smiled, because Julius always went out of his way to make me feel included. And so, I baited another hook.

  
  
  


I was ten when my mother came to my room to talk. “Do you know what it means, Cicero?” she had asked.

“I don’t.” I said, my lower lip quivering. I tried to conceal it, tried to cover it up, because I wanted my mother to think I was strong like Julius. I wanted her to think that I could be like him if I really tried, and then maybe she would tell my father that I was good, too.”

My mother ran her hand over my hair, smoothing it back into place. She tucked the covers around me, then kissed the freckles on my cheeks. “It means he’s going to die.” she explained. “The doctors say he has about a year left.”

“But…why?” I couldn’t make any sense of it. “People die when they’re old. Julius is young.”

My mother had smiled, her eyes scrunching at the corner where the tears pooled. “People die all the time, Cicero. Some sooner than others.”

“Maybe the doctors can give it to me, instead.” I said. “Maybe I can take the sickness.”

She laughed a little, running her fingers through my hair and pushing it away from my face. “You’re such a good boy, Cicero. A good, good boy. And you’ll be a good man.” She paused, pursing her lips. “But you can’t take the sickness, because you need to help your father on the farm, now. Julius can’t anymore.”

“Of course I can help.” I said eagerly. “I’ll do anything to help Julius.”

“Thank you, Cicero.” my mother said quietly. “That will make your father happy.”

  
  
  


I was eleven when my father told me to stop working. “You’re messing shit up, Cicero. You’re not being any help at all.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, though most of the liquid stayed in his mustache and smeared down his face. “Why can’t you be m-more like your brother?”

“I’m trying, Father.” I said, staring down at the dirt on my blistered hands and the mud caked between my toes. “I can be better.”

“You can’t be better, because you’re n-not Julius.” He sort of staggered as he stood staring down at me, his stance wobbly on his drunken feet. He tossed the bottle he drank from at me, and it hit my arm with a soft thud before it clattered to the ground. “Go get me another drink, boy.”

I had turned and walked back to the house, my fists clenched because I knew I was good. My mother always told me I was good, and I didn’t know why she didn’t tell him I was. I slammed the door behind me as I walked to the kitchen.

Julius was in there, trying to pull himself off of the floor using the cabinet door to support his weight. He laughed when I saw him. “I can’t get up.” he said simply. “I should have stayed in bed like Mother said.” 

I had picked him up off of the ground. He was a shell, a hollow version of my brother. We barely weighed anything, and his face was sunken in and pale. When I put him back in his bed and made sure he was comfortable, I’d sat on the edge of his bed. “Tell me what’s wrong with me, Julius.” I had requested. “I don’t know why Father doesn’t like me.”

“Because he doesn’t know what’s good, little brother.” He squeezed my arm. “Don’t let him bother you.”

“I’m trying not to.” I stammered, feeling tears well up in my eyes, but refusing to let the fall. “I’m trying to be more like you, but I don’t think it’s helping.”

“Don’t try to be like me.” Julius said. “Just be you. He loves you, Cicero. He just doesn’t know how to show it.”

I sighed. “Okay.”

  
  
  


I was twelve when Julius died. They buried him on the edge of our farm in Bruma, underneath a large willow tree that we used to climb together. I walked out to the fields to sit with my father, who had wandered out to the hillside where his corn grew to sit on the very top. I sat beside him, looking out at the fields around us and then up at my father.

He was a gruff man, short but muscular. He was never affectionate toward me, and I didn’t expect any affection to live within a man who looked like he could kill me with one hand. His mustache dominated the lower half of his face, and his red hair was growing long as he refused to acknowledge hygiene anymore.

I shook my head as I stared up at him. “I’m sorry he’s gone, Father.”

His upper lip curled for a moment, as if he really didn’t want to hear me speak at all. “I am too.”

“I’ll help you take care of the farm.” I said. “I can work dusk to dawn with you, and I can learn to do all of the things he did to help. I want…I want to help you.”

“You can’t help me, Cicero.” he said. “You’re not like him. You’re like you’re mother. Got your head in clouds or some shit. Can’t focus on the job that needs to be done.”

“But I can learn.” I mumbled. “I can listen, and I’ll watch you do things, and then I’ll be able to do them.”

“I don’t want your help, damnit!” he shouted, his voice echoing through the hills. “Get out of here, Cicero. I don’t want your help. I don’t want you in my fields.”

I stood and left, because I didn’t want to help him anyway. As I walked away, he muttered something that I wasn’t meant to hear, but I did because my hearing had always been far too good.

“I lost the wrong son.”

  
  
  


I was thirteen when my father was too drunk to tend his crops anymore. All of the money he’d saved for us had been swallowed, the liquid fire that trickled down his throat fueling the whirlwind that ruled his mind.

My mother was weak, once so beautiful and strong and now so hollow. My father was angry when he was drunk, and he beat her into insanity. She talked to herself, or someone that no one else saw. She called him her angel, and she forced me to pray for the both of us with her and her imaginary angel. It drove my father crazy to watch her talk to no one, and it only made him beat her more.

I stood before my mother one late evening. My father had wandered out to take a piss and fallen over drunk in the field. He’d passed out, and I didn’t really feel like trying to help him. She ran her hand over the dark bruise that he’d left on my face after I asked him if he needed help in fields earlier that day.

“I’m sorry that this is our life, Cicero.” she said around her busted lips. “I’m sorry that this is what you’ll remember of me.”

I shook my head. “Let’s just leave him, Mother. There’s nothing for us here.” I took her hand, pulling her toward her bedroom. “Pack your things, and I’ll take you away from him.”

She pulled me to a stop, the sorrow on her face evident and heartbreaking. “We can’t leave him, Cicero. He’ll find us.”

“We can’t stay, Mother.” I tried to persuade. “He’ll kill you if we stay.”

“He’ll kill us both if we leave.” She looked over her shoulder at someone I couldn’t see. “He says we’ll be safe, if we just wait. I trust him, Cicero.” she said, and that was her decision. She would stay until she died.

  
  
  


I was fourteen when I killed my father. I found my mother’s body on the kitchen floor, bloody and mangled because he’d strangled her to death. She had been cooking dinner for him, and it was taking longer than he would have liked. When I entered the kitchen, I dropped to my knees, hunched over my dead mother and crying because I could have saved her. I could have taken her away from here and kept her alive, but I didn’t.

I heard my father grumbling in the next room, his drunken rabbling like nails against a chalkboard. I squinted through the tears in my eyes, and in a moment of rage, I grabbed a kitchen knife and stalked toward the living room.

He sat in his ratty chair, liquor in his hand and in his mustache. He faced away from me, toward the front door of our home, and he smelled utterly foul. He’d stopped bathing when Julius died, really, and I noted that I would probably look like him one day. I didn’t want that. The thought disgusted me because I hated him; I hated him more than I’d ever hated anyone.

I loomed over him, and he must have sensed my presence, because he laughed. “What are you doin’ in here, boy?” All of his words slurred together, and he took another swig of his drink. “You sh-should be out there in the field like your gods damned brother. He was the good son, the one I n-needed.”

I gripped a fistful of his hair, leaning his head back to look at me. “Did you kill her?”

He laughed. “Yeah, I k-killed her. Bitch took too long with my supper.”

And then, I pressed the knife to his flesh and slit his throat. He never made a sound, never struggled or resisted. He simply died by my hand. 


	3. Lonely Cicero Could Tell You a Thing or Two...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi, guys! Thanks for reading!
> 
> Let me know what you're thinking in the comments section. I always look forward to feedback.

I was fifteen when Augustan found me in the streets of Bruma. I’d been living off of the little money I’d earned when I sold all of my father’s possessions and my mother’s jewelry. I’d pawned off her wedding band for a fair amount of gold, but I’d been mugged a week before and lost a lot of what I owned.

He approached me in the dark alley I was laying in, my bed a mat of crumpled newspapers like a dog. I stared up at him, my hair matted and my skin burned from the sun. He crouched before me, his hands pressed together and his arms resting on his bended knees.

“What’s your name, son?” he asked, his face shadowed by a dark cowl, which matched his dark armor. “Do you know what your name is?”

“My name is Cicero.” I mumbled, my throat hoarse. I hadn’t spoken in a long time before that moment. “Who are you?”

“My name is not as important as yours, but it’s Augustan.” He cocked his head to the side. “I’d like to ask you a question.” I shrugged, assuming he’d ask what I was doing out here, as many often did before they tossed a few septims at me. “Did you kill your mother and father on that farm? We found your mother in the kitchen, your father with his throat slit in the chair.”

My heart dropped, and I accepted that I’d been discovered. I’d go to prison, I’d spend the rest of my life paying for my father’s alcoholism. After a long time, I shook my head. “Just my father. He killed my mother.” My face burned as I spoke. “Are you taking me to trial?”

Augustan laughed. “No. I didn’t follow you to criticize you, but instead to praise you. It was a good kill. You cut him in the right place, severed the jugular. There’s a cleaner way to do it, a way to keep the flow of blood minimal, but that comes with time.”

I shook my head again. “I don’t understand. I’m…you’re not supposed to kill people.”

He smiled, a dark smile that accentuated his rounded Breton features. “My organization kills people who deserve to be killed. Do you believe your father deserved to be killed?”

I was quiet again, my heart pounding in my chest as I nodded. “He deserved worse. I didn’t know how to inflict worse.” I clenched my jaw. “Fathers should not beat their children.”

Augustan nodded, his eyes catching the little scar on my chin that was more recent than some of the others. He ran his thumb over the mark, lifting my chin and turning my face from side to side to look at me. “You have no family?”

“They’re all dead.” I said quietly as Augustan wiped some of the dirt away from my face. He smirked when he saw the freckles on my cheeks, previously covered by soot.

He released me, standing and extending his hand to guide me away from my little mat. “I think you’d make a nice addition to my family, son.” He smiled, and so did I, because I’d never felt more comfortable around someone in my entire life. “Come with me, if you want to.”

  
  
  


I was sixteen when I completed my first contract. It was a simple contract, a sick old man who’d abused his daughter her entire life. The woman had been so broken when I spoke to her, so damaged and dead inside, and she’d paid me three hundred septims to kill her old man.

I did, drove a blade through his chest because I hated him, too. I didn’t understand how anyone could hurt a child, and Augustan knew that, too. He knew it would be easy for me to kill this man because I felt the woman’s pain. He placed his hand on my shoulder in the common room, where many of my new brothers and sisters had gathered to hear me tell the full tale and congratulate me on a successful kill.

“How does it feel, Cicero?” he asked, his eyes wearing concern and genuine interest. “You weren’t uncomfortable, were you?”

“No, no.” I said quickly. “If it’s not too morbid to say, I kind of liked it. A lot.”

“It’s very morbid to say.” Malina said from across from me, a beautiful young Nord who’d fled Skyrim to join the Dark Brotherhood after her mother passed away. “But that doesn’t mean it’s not true for all of us.”

“So, you’d like another contract, then?” Augustan asked, a scroll in his hand that the Listener had given him to deal out. “I have one that I think would suit you well.”

I smirked. “Yes. I’d like another contract.”

  
  
  


I was seventeen when Malina told me she loved me. She was the first woman who had ever loved me, but I wasn’t sure I really felt anything toward her other than a sibling’s admiration. She ran her fingers through my hair, which I was letting grow out because I looked like Julius with short hair.

“I think I’m in love with you, Cicero.” she said quietly, her voice hushed because we sat on the edge of my bed in the recruits’ room. She had long, white-blond hair and blue eyes, strikingly light against the dark of her armor and the sanctuary. “I don’t think I’ve ever been in love, but I think I’m in love with you.”

I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry to hear that.” I said, removing her hand from my hair and placing it back in her lap. “Love makes you weak, and I don’t think I possess any love to return to you. I’m not a man who loves.”

She nodded, her expression never faltering. “I know that. I don’t mean you have to love me back. I just wanted you to know.”

I sighed, pinching the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “I have a contract in Anvil on Fridas. I’ll be gone for a few days.”

“Come back to me, Cicero.” she mumbled. She pressed her face against my neck, her lips brushing my skin and irritating me beyond description.

“I’ll come back to the sanctuary, Malina. Not just to you.” I stood, then, eager to be away from her and to work my blade. “Please convey to Augustan that I’ve left on contract.”

“Of course.” she said, nodding eagerly. I rolled my eyes, striding from the room and toward the exit.

  
  
  


I was eighteen when I arrived in the Cheydinhal sanctuary. Bruma had burned, and along with it all of my brothers and sisters. Marina and Livius, and Nero and Quintus and Augustan. An anonymous tip to the city’s authorities, and the entire family was dead. I wasn’t sure how I’d survived, how I’d narrowly escaped the hand of death when the sanctuary was emerged in flames. I couldn’t explain why I was spared, but I was.

And I stood before Rasha, who smiled at me as if he’d always known me. He was warm and gentle for a cutthroat, the Speaker of Cheydinhal and personal friend of the most honored Alisanne Dupree. The level of support and acceptance they offered me was overwhelming, greeting me with smiles and hugs and kind words in respect for my fallen family. The sanctuary knew loss, the lingering whispers of Purification still haunting its halls after the great treachery of Matthieu Belamont. Who better to understand the plight of a brother who has lost home and heart?

The Bruma sanctuary may have been gone, but my dearest brothers and sisters live forever in my dreams, just as their souls live forever by the Dread Father’s side. And I thought of them as I unpacked my things, folded my armor and placed it in the drawers beside my assigned bed. I heard shuffling behind me, and I turned to see Rasha once again, a small brown book in his hand.

“The first sanctuary this one lived in burned.” he said quietly, his eyes sympathetic as I looked up at him. “The entirety of my brothers and sisters were lost. All except for me. This one understands what you feel.”

I took the book when he extended it to me. “What is this?” I asked, opening it to find empty pages. 

He shrugged. “It helped to keep a chronical of the things only I would know. A journal. I thought you might like one, too.”

I smiled, staring up at him and nodding because I truly appreciated it. “Thank you, Rasha. I’ll begin to write immediately.”


	4. Cicero, Garnag, Pontius.

I was nineteen when the Listener, Alisanne Dupree, came to visit Rasha in our sanctuary, down from her private residence in Bravil. She wanted to reopen the Shadowscale training facility in Archon, a small city in Black Marsh. She had always been an admirer of Lucien Lachance’s work with the Shadowscales, and she felt that it was a good path to take while chaos erupted in Cyrodiil in the latter years of the Great War. She wanted to ensure the Dark Brotherhood’s protection.

Rashsa reminded her that it was ultimately a waste of time. We lacked the resources to follow through with her plan, even though he supported it in the fullest. I had passed by the open door on my way to the eating area after sneaking out of Sarina’s bed when Rasha called me in.

I sat across from Alisanne Dupree, her green eyes fixed on me as I situated myself in my seat. “I’d like to know what you think. Rasha speaks highly of you, and he rarely speaks highly of anyone. Is it foolish to try and reopen another sanctuary to train the Shadowscales?”

I cleared my throat, bowing my head in respect before I spoke. “I am but a lowly assassin, my Listener. My opinions carry no importance.”

“We were all assassins, once, and the position is not lowly.” she corrected, her smile soft and kind. “I’d like to know what you think.”

I looked to Rasha for permission, then accepted his nod as his blessing to speak freely in front of the leader of the Dark Brotherhood. “My personal feeling is that the Dark Brotherhood should, at the very least, maintain the illusion of being everywhere at once. It has become exceedingly difficult to fulfill contracts in provinces that we no longer have a physical connection to. Hammerfell, for instance. The more we ignore Tamriel, the more people lose faith in the Dark Brotherhood—our power, our services, our dedication to the Void.” I cleared my throat again. “I would reopen the training facility, but if we lack the resources, I would do it at the earliest availability.”

Alisanne Dupree smiled crookedly. “I like him, Rasha. I understand why you do, too.” She raised an eyebrow at the Khajit Speaker. “You should assign him that Arena contract. The Grand Champion deserves a death that this man will devise.”

  
  
  


I was twenty when Alisanne Dupree was killed protecting the Unholy Matron with her dying breath. Garnag and Andronica had gone to aid the crypt’s defense, and we had stopped receiving communications from the city. Rasha feared the worst and prepared us all for the fact that the Night Mother’s body may have been desecrated and destroyed, thusly desecrating and destroying the Dark Brotherhood.

Garnag returned alone that morning, transporting the iron tomb that capsuled the Night Mother. The story he told could curl the blood of even the most hardened of Sithis’ servants. The crypt of the Night Mother, raided. Dearest sister Andronica, cut to pieces. The Listener herself, most honored Alisanne Dupree, who I’d just spoken to not so long ago, burned alive in a storm of mage fire. Garnag was gravely injured, and he lost his right eye, but he managed to fend off the attackers and transport the Night Mother’s coffin safely out of the city. He had been on the road, making his way back to Cheydinhal, since that tragic night. 

We were a Dark Brotherhood without a Listener, the Black Sacrament going unheard. I was certain the Night Mother would pick someone soon, someone to replace Alisanne Dupree as Listener. Until that happened, we took to the streets. We heard the pleas of the desperate and vengeful with our own ears and killed to maintain our names. The people of Tamriel couldn’t know that their prayers to the Night Mother were going unheard.

  
  
  


I was twenty-one when I was appointed Keeper. By some incomprehensible twist of fate, the Black Hand had named me the Night Mother’s Keeper. “Alisanne would have wanted it to be you, Cicero.” Rasha said to me, his hand on my shoulder.

I was both incredibly honored and deeply saddened, because as Rasha explained the duties of my new position, I realized I would no longer work my blade. My soul duty was to safeguard the Night Mother’s remains, and it took the Black Hand a mere day to make their decision.

“I’ll give you one final contract.” Rasha said, his smile alleviating the sadness I felt. “It’s one I think you’ll like. A jester, actually. Murdered a dozen children for no reason at all.” My heart had surged at the words, my lust to kill those who hurt the young and innocent boiling beneath my skin. “You can take as long as you need to with him. Be as thorough as you’d like.”

  
  
  


I was twenty-two when Cheydinhal erupted into violence and chaos. Like so many other cities before it, it was no longer safe to walk the streets, to roam or travel around the corner. The sanctuary remained unbreached, but there was no way of knowing for how long. 

Our numbers were few, and with no Listener, the contracts dwindled almost to nothingness. We couldn’t leave, we couldn’t. Rasha’s hold on the sanctuary began to slip.

There were five of us: Rasha, Garnag, Pontius, Alabaster, and me. Alabaster had been injured in the streets, and Pontius spent much of his time caring for the old Imperial. Garnag was with me in our own corner of the sanctuary, where we communed our thoughts and conversed our options. When I wasn’t caring for Mother, Rasha sometimes spoke to us. He rarely left his chambers, his grip on command starting to sway as we began to doubt him.

I remained unworthy. Months and months and months and no Listener. I didn’t understand why the Night Mother wouldn’t speak to me. I was worthy of being her Keeper, but not her Listener. I protected our Lady, kept her sanctified, but still she would not grace me with her voice.

Rasha emerged from his chambers when Alabaster died, and he claimed the Night Mother had spoken to him. He told us of a contract in the Imperial City, one that required the three of us to travel, and he would stay with the Night Mother. He couldn’t produce the Binding Words when I asked.

Liar! Deciever! His charade couldn’t stand! As commanded by the silence, so did I obey. I did not wield the knife, oh no, but I dipped the honeyed words, softly sweetly, into Garnag’s eager ear. He did the deed gladly.

And so, I was twenty-two when Rasha died, when Pontius was killed by a common bandit, when Garnag went out for food and never returned, and when the sanctuary was doomed.


	5. Crazy? Cicero?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> what it do, friends?
> 
> So, I haven't been posting commentary as I usually do because I'm trying not to muddle the writing with my talking. I just wanted to throw out there that this chapter, as well as the last, include some direct quotation and altered quotation from Cicero's Journals in the game, which I obviously have no rights to. Word.
> 
> Thanks for reading, pals. Enjoy!

Laughing, laughing, laughing, laughing! It’s the jester! A voice from the Void, to cheer poor Cicero! I could hear it, deeper and deeper, louder and louder. It punctuated the silence like thunder on a calm evening.

I wandered the halls, searched every corner, every nook and cranny, every possible hiding spot for the laughter to be, but I couldn’t find it. It wouldn’t stop! No matter how I begged or how hard I slammed my head against the wall, it never went away!

I understood after many long months that it wasn’t anywhere in the sanctuary. It was in my head! In my head in my head in my head. Laughter to replace the deafening silence, the silence of death, the silence of the Void.

I fell to my knees before the coffin, laughing as wildly as the sound in my head as I cried to the Night Mother. “Thank you, sweet Mother! Thank you for my laughter! Thank you for my friend!”

  
  
  


“I love the laughter, dearest Mother, but I still long to hear your voice,”

There was a deafening silence that radiated through the room, the dark that closed in on me and reminded me that I was so alone. I had always been alone. I was trapped here, in the dark, by my own hand because I couldn’t leave without Mother.

“It’s not too late! Speak to me that I may set things right!” I cried, begging for a voice to grace my ears. “I can save the sanctuary! I can save the Dark Brotherhood!”

It laughed at me, the voice in my head. It cackled, the sound bouncing around in my skull and making my skin crawl. I slammed my head against the floor, willing it to stop. “Take the laughter, Mother! You can have the laughter! Take it back!” 

There was no answer.

  
  
  


The laughter had filled me, filled me so very completely. I am the laughter. I am the jester. The soul that had served as my constant companion for so long had breached the veil of the Void finally and forever.

It was in me. It _ was _ me. The world had seen the last of Cicero the man. I stared down at the contents of the dresser, and from it I pulled my final trophy. Hours, days, months spent in solitude with nothing to occupy my mind but the laughter, and Cicero had no choice but to become the laughter. Stitching, measuring, fitting, restitching, sewing, laughing, laughing, laughing.

I ran my fingers over the lush velvet, and I slipped into the pants. They fit too perfectly, made for my legs and my legs alone. The coat was a little loose, and the moths had eaten a hole in the fabric, but that could be patched and tailored. I had plenty of time to fill, to occupy my mind.

As I buttoned the buttons of the coat, Cicero’s finger’s adjusting button after button, unbuttoning and rebuttoning, I watched my reflection in the cracked mirror before me. It looked fine—it suited me, actually, but I noted that something was wrong. Something was missing, and I couldn’t understand what.

I looked back down at the drawer, the jester’s cap, the sole souvenir from my hours with the jester, taunting me from its spot. I lifted the delicate material, placing it on my head and clenching my jaw as I watched my own reflection dress me. It was the icing on the poisoned cake that my life had become, the accent piece that fluffed the table set for five that I’d hallucinated so often. 

Poor Cicero no longer heard the laughter, because he was the laughter. The Fool of Hearts.

Laughter incarnate.

  
  
  
  
  
  


I was twenty-nine when I wrote the letters to Astrid. So polite! So official! Hers was the only remaining sanctuary in all of Tamriel, located in the woods somewhere in Skyrim. Her sanctuary still stood, still operated.

But how? No Listener meant no Black Sacrament. No Black Sacrament meant no contracts. No contracts meant no souls to send to Sithis. Her family could abandon the Old Ways and still survive, still kill, but is that family still Brotherhood? Or is it something else? Something new. Something different. Something wrong.

_ Something wrong. _

Still, we must go! I arranged for us to set sail.  _ Float on a boat through the moat called the see her and me! _ And me! I’m going, too.

_ It doesn’t matter if you go. Cicero is unworthy. Unworthy and useless to Mother. _

That’s not true. You’re trying to hurt me.

_ If I wanted to hurt you, I could. _ I didn’t doubt the laughter, for everything it had already said and done was true. 

 

 

 

I was twenty-nine and a half when I lived in the Dawnstar sanctuary. I wanted my own place, a joker’s retreat for the Fool of Hearts! I found the passphrase, I found the sanctuary; everything about the place was mine mine mine!

The sanctuary was home, as I had dared hope. Cool and dark and lovely. My sanctuary, sanctuary from all. I knew its every corner, every hall, every shadowed nook and alcove. My sanctuary. The guardians knew me, recognized me as Keeper. The big ugly beast—a different story. He would have eaten me if he could have, but to bind me, grind me, he’d have to find me, and he couldn’t. Cicero made sure that didn’t happen, for he had sanctuary! Sanctuary from all!

The sanctuary was safety, and salvation. But silent—so, so silent. I gave my love to the Unholy Matron. I gave my laughter freely. But I did not hear her. The silence returned. Now that I was the laughter, and no longer heard the laughter, I once again heard the silence. It reached across time and space. Its silence is deafening, once more.

And so Mother and Keeper must go. I was not the Listener, and never would be. But I was the Keeper. I had to serve my Mother’s will above my own and find her Listener. I had to teach Astrid the error of her ways, the beauty and necessity of the Old Ways. I sent another letter to Astrid, but Cicero would keep this sanctuary as his sanctuary. A place to rest and ply my trade, for I once more take up the blade, and send some lucky souls to Him, when laughter strikes, as fits my whim!

 

 

 

I was almost thirty when I waited for her to return from Loreius’ farm. She had stumbled upon me. We’d stumbled upon each other by accident. I listened intently, hearing the sound of something smashing before she reappeared from the barn on the hill above me. 

She was small, a little Breton girl with dark hair and gray eyes. She was speckled with scars, big ones and small ones alike and different. They covered her hands and her neck and spattered across her face, but she was beautiful. She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever seen.

She made the steep descent back to my wagon fairly quickly, a small box in her hand that she held by the handle. I bounced from foot to foot in anticipation, eager to know if Loreius had changed his mind for the beautiful woman.

“Did the kind stranger convince Loreius to help Cicero’s poor mother?”

She raised an eyebrow, rolling her eyes as she glanced back at the farm. “No. Loreius was rather set in his ways about helping.” She turned back to me, holding up the box of tools in her hand. “But, I figured I could have a go at it.”


	6. Cicero Never Forgets a Face

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly pulled/modified from Whispers in the Dark (see previous work).
> 
> These are the moments of Cicero's life that are important to him, so of course a lot of WitD is in this, ya dig?
> 
> Hang tight. More to come.

As I jammed the metal into the wood, I heard a quiet giggle. My head snapped rather quickly in the direction of the sound. The late entry stepped toward me after sneaking into the room in the middle of Astrid’s introductions.

“Maybe I can help you.” she said, a smile audible in her voice and visible on her lips. “That’ll never get the crate open.”

It was the stranger from the farm! Arabella! She had snuck in while Cicero was unloading his Mother and his words, yes! I took a few quick strides toward her, my chest swelling with excitement. I’d been so worried that I would be alone in Falkreath, and the fact that she was here too made my heart light.

“Dear, sweet Arabella. If Cicero had known the kindly stranger was a member of his new family, he would have offered her a ride to the sanctuary.” I grabbed her hand and twirled her around. She laughed as she spun, seemingly unfazed by my over-the-top reaction. Most of the time, I tried to act as extravagantly as possible. It seemed to deter the people who found poor Cicero to be a nuisance. 

“Hello again, Cicero.” I stopped spinning with her so she could speak. She’d become sort of dizzy, and I helped steady her. “I actually wasn’t with the Dark Brotherhood when we crossed paths. I was recruited not hours later. How funny is that?” Her pale eyes sparkled with wonder.

“Very funny indeed, sweet Arabella. And Cicero knows all about funny. Cicero knows the laughter personally.” I began to dance about her while she laughed.

Something sparkled in her eyes, a sort of wise and knowing twinkle that made my stomach flop in ways I’d never experienced. “I had a feeling I was meant to know you.”

  
  
  


“Poor Cicero has failed you. Poor Cicero is sorry, sweet Mother.” I felt my own tears, and they were genuine because I’d given up hope. There was no Listener in Cyrodiil, no Listener in Skyrim, no Listener in me. “I’ve tried so very hard. But I just can’t find the Listener.”

A shuffle from within the coffin frightened me, and I quickly unlocked the iron doors and allowed Arabella to fall out and hit the ground. Her hands covered her ears, as if she were trying to block out some sound she didn’t desire to hear.

_ You had one job. Cicero failed to protect the Night Mother. _

“What? What is this treachery? Defiler! Debaser and defiler!” I grabbed her by the arm and dragged her to her feet. I slammed her up against the wall, unable to wiggle free from my iron grasp. “You have violated the sanctity of the Night Mother’s coffin. Explain yourself!” She couldn’t find words, and she just stared at me with fearful eyes. I shook her. “Speak worm!”

“The Night Mother spoke to me. She said I’m ‘the one.’” Her voice was frantic.

“She…she spoke to you?” I felt that my eyes were soft for only a moment, then they filled with bloodlust.  _ She’s lying! She lies! _ One of my hands held her arm, keeping her pinned to the wall. My other hand squeezed her scarred cheeks with such force she could hardly move her jaw. “More treachery. More trickery and deceit. You lie! The Night Mother only speaks to the Listener.” The laughing in my head grew even wilder. “And there is  _ no _ listener!”

“Darkness rises when silence dies.” She tried to spit at me around my hand trapping her words. “Darkness rises when silence dies.”

My hand loosened. “What did you say?” 

“Darkness rises when silence dies.” she repeated, her honey-worded voice skewing the word ‘darkness’, molding it to fit her accent.

I let go of her arm, but kept my hand on her face. “She said that? She said those words to you? ‘Darkness rises when silence dies’?”

She nodded to me, putting her hand on my cheek “Cicero, darkness rises when silence dies. She told me to tell you.” She stared at me, waiting desperately for me to believe her.

I shook my head as I stepped away from her, trying to make sense of the words. “But those are the words. The Binding Words. Written in the Keeping Tomes. The signal so I would know—Mother’s only way of talking to sweet Cicero.”

My heart pounded rhythmically to the tempo of the laughter in my temple. I cackled with laughter. “Then it’s true. She’s back! Our lady is back! She has chosen a Listener.” I grabbed her hands and pulled her into my dance. “She has chosen you, sweet Arabella! Ha ha ha! All hail the Listener!”

 

 

“My mother took care of me for a few years on her own, but she couldn’t bring a child on raids. Finally, when I was eight, she took me to Honorhall in Riften, and she said she’d come back and get me soon. I never saw her again.” 

I watched her face silently, eager to see if she would express any emotion toward it, but she never did. Eventually, she smiled. “It’s alright now. I wouldn’t have found you or the Night Mother without my years at Honorhall. I was on my way to Whiterun to visit another orphan when I found you on the road.” 

I laughed as the Listener and I played our favorite game. She asked a question, then I answered and asked a question. It was a sort of back-and-forth that could occupy our time for hours. We always had a new question, one that we desperately needed to know about the other.

Finally she looked up at me. “Cicero, did you want to be Listener?”

My face fell, and I knew immediately that she regretted asking. “Well, yes. I did try very hard to be the Listener. I listened very hard, but Mother wouldn’t speak to me. Cicero is the Keeper, and Arabella is the Listener, and all is well.” 

Desperate to know suddenly, I asked my question. “Do I frighten you?” Her brow furrowed, and I lifted my hand to interrupt whatever she was thinking. “Be honest with Cicero. The day you fell out of Mother’s coffin, did you think I would hurt you?”

“No, I didn’t.” She paused, looking up at the sky. “I was more afraid you were going to hurt yourself. Your job is to protect her, and I understand your reaction. But Cicero, I knew you wouldn’t hurt me. I trust you, more than I have ever trusted anyone.”

Relief spread across my face, but it was accompanied soon after by guilt. “Oh, Arabella. I tried so hard not to hurt you, but the laughter was so loud I couldn’t hear my own thoughts screaming at me to stop. Cicero is so sorry.”

She sort of smirked, a crooked smile that eased my worry. “Stop apologizing. It feels like it happened years ago.” 

I didn’t quite know what to say to her. She was magnificent, this giving and loving creature that took care of everyone but herself. I’d never had a real friend, one that I could tell anything to, one that I craved to spend time with. And I found that, in her, and I didn’t want to do anything to mess it up.

I was utterly serious when I spoke. “I would do anything to protect the Night Mother, to please the Dread Lord, to serve the Dark Brotherhood. But I would never do anything to hurt the Listener.”

  
  
  


“Vittoria Vici has been killed!” Babette cried as we dashed through Solitude. “The Stormcloaks must have done it. Oh, papa, how could you bring me to such a terrible wedding?”

Cicero was trying so hard to contain his laughter. My hair was flying behind me, free from the usual grasp of my jester’s cap in my ‘caring husband’ ensemble. We’d been posing as a family to infiltrate the broad’s wedding, and we’d actually pulled it off. “Oh, dearest daughter, how could I have known Vici would be murdered at her own wedding? If the guards around here did their jobs, the Stormcloaks wouldn’t have murdered poor Vittoria!” I playfully bopped a guard on the head as we ran past.

It should have been a celebration as soon as Arabella flew from the wall of Solitude. She had shoved the gargoyle onto the gushing bride and jumped off of the wall, where Veezara had been waiting for her below. I needed to see that she was okay, though. I needed to know that she had survived the fall.

Veezara was already at the wagon, mounted and ready to go. His armor was clearly wet, meaning he had pulled her out, but Arabella was nowhere in sight. We hopped into the wagon, and Veezara started to move.

“Where is the Listener?” I screamed, my eyes bolting around as I searched for her. 

“She’s coming, brother. She’s changing, disposing of the clothes, in case she was seen.” Veezara picked the wagon up to full speed.

“Where is the Listener, Veezara? I don’t see her. Why are we moving?” I was losing my mind, about to jump out of the wagon and find her myself.

Just then, Arabella popped out of the stables and came running after the wagon. She closed the distance between us, pumping her legs at full speed. For a moment, she was just a blur of dark hair and darker armor. Anxious as I saw her, I reached my arm out to her. She grabbed onto me, and with one arm, I hoisted her into the wagon. 

Her hair was wet and the rouge was running down her face, revealing the scars on her neck and cheek. She wiped the makeup away, water droplets trickling down her face from her eyelashes and hair. Still in my arms, I held her for a moment, my eyes closed while I brought myself back from whatever land a lunacy I was in a moment before, when I couldn’t find her.

Once she was in the wagon and I had calmed down, we all celebrated loudly. Veezara and Arabella hugged, and I picked Babette up and spun her around. Arabella then hugged Babette and I dared to give the Listener a friendly kiss on the cheek. 

Finally, I plopped the piece of cake I’d promised to bring into Veezara’s lap. “Oh, vanilla! My favorite. Someone else steer.” I grabbed the reins, and we headed for home, still laughing as Veezara ate his souvenir. When I glanced back, there was something curious in the glance that Arabella and Veezara exchanged.


	7. Poor Cicero. Dear Cicero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Anyone else triggered by the chapter titles? They break my little dark heart. 
> 
> I'll stop making commentary lmao.

Her face was so serious after she healed me in the Dawnstar sanctuary. The woman was a master in the art of restoration, and her abilities were creeping up on necromancy. I’d never seen it like that before, the expression on her face. “Why didn’t you tell me about Rasha?”

           I blinked, trying to make sense of the words she had said, but the laughter spoke before I could.  _ How did the Listener know? _

_           Who told her? _

_           How could she be so nosy? _

_           No one can know about Rasha and Garnag. _

_           Astrid was right. She wasn’t the Listener. Just another filthy pretender like Rasha! Cicero should be Listener! Not her! _

_          There is no Listener! Kill her kill her kill her kill her kill her. _

           Arabella’s face was much closer to mine now, her cheeks a shade of reddish-purple. I hadn’t even realized that I had moved when I found that I was on top of her, my hands at her throat, shaking and choking and strangling her. As her eyes began to water, turning red around the gray irises in the center, I felt her hand on my arm, tapping to get my attention but never trying to pull my hands away. She didn't fight, didn't struggle.

           Her eyes were locked on mine, and I felt my brow furrow as I realized I couldn't stop. The laughter echoed in my temple, bouncing off of my brain and stinging the sides of my skull. Arabella wrapped her fingers around my forearm, shaking me gently as she struggled for breath. It was then that I was able to pull myself back to the room, to pull my hands away from her neck, to drag myself away from her.

           She inhaled, loud and sharp, before coughing harshly. Her own hand touched her throat, the soft flesh bruising in the shapes of my gloved fingers. She stayed on the ground for a long time, until her breaths were even and full, then she sat up, using her hands to support her. I just watched as she took air into her lungs, a rhythmic motion of inhale and exhale that confirmed that I hadn't killed her, even though the laughter still screamed for me to hurt her.

_ You failed. Weak Cicero can't even kill a little Breton girl. _

          "I can't do it." I said to the voice. "I can't hurt her. I won't."

_ She didn't even fight! You call yourself an assassin? _

           I gripped the sides of my head, pounding against my skull with open palms. "Stop it, stop it, stop it! Stop talking!"

           Slowly, Arabella crawled toward me. She sat before me, her eyes betraying the fear she felt, but she still reached out to me, pulling my hands away from my head and placing them at my sides. She shook her head slowly. "Cicero, I'm sorry."

           Why was she apologizing to me? I'd nearly killed her a moment ago, and she thought it was her fault for asking the question and making me angry. I couldn't control the laughter, I was weak and foolish and my will was so easily manipulated by the voice in my head. I looked at her more closely, the scars on her face and the beauty I saw in her every day rendered unimportant by the kindness she showed me. And I'd tried to kill her. I'd come so close, so dangerously close to destroying something so breakable, and I hated myself for it. I hated myself.

           My face dropped to her shoulder and I sobbed uncontrollably, low cries billowing out of my chest and become loud, unmanageable sobs. She wrapped her arms around me, holding me as I trembled and cursed myself. The Listener’s body, so warm and so fragile, nearly drained of life by Cicero’s hand, and still she held me.

            I gained some control over myself, willing myself to sit up and explain what had happened to her. I told her about Rasha, about Garnag and the silence and the laughter. She didn’t even blink. She understood me, in so many different ways.

Finally, she had to leave me. She had to return to the sanctuary and tell them I was dead. Tell them she drowned, stabbed, strangled poor Cicero with his own intestines. “I’ll visit when I can. I don’t know when.” She hugged me tightly, and I clung to her, breathing deeply as I tried to make the embrace last as long as I could. “If you leave, please leave a way for me to know where you’ve gone. I can’t lose anyone else. I won’t survive it.”

           I thought for a moment, long and hard. The laughter was gone, the voices were cleared, my thoughts were my own. I couldn’t lose her. I couldn’t let her leave. I needed her to stay with me, needed to keep her within my reach. I traced the bruises I'd left on her throat, placing my fingers over the marks and seeing that they were a perfect match.

           And then, without thinking, I pulled her face to mine, pressing my lips against hers as gently as I could manage. She stared at me with wildly confused eyes, but after a moment, she relaxed, her eyes fluttering closed as we kissed again.

           After a moment, we separated from the sudden moment of affection. She stared up at me, her eyes confused and still so happy. I pressed my forehead against hers and whispered to her. “Please protect yourself, Arabella. Mother needs you. I need you.” She nodded to me, but she said nothing else as she left the room. I followed behind her quietly as she left the sanctuary. The last thing I saw of the Listener was as she looked over her shoulder before the black door closed behind her.

  
  
  


Babette and Nazir only had three small bags in the wagon. I helped them unload them, and we reentered the sanctuary. I asked a million questions, as we sat on the floor near Mother. They told me about how everything was very normal. Festus had just returned from contract with Arabella, and she was still out, pretending to be the Gourmet. She was supposed to return that night. 

Then they told me of the flames and the murder. They told me of the Black Sacrament, and the Pretender’s grand finale. Nazir went to great lengths to express his interest in how Arabella responded to the Night Mother’s voice. How she would walk around like a blind woman, following the sounds she heard in her own head.

That’s when the black door opened. We stood and waited for Arabella to come down the stairs. She was carrying bags of food to hold the new family’s appetite for the evening. 

When I saw her, I was standing behind Babette and Nazir. She looked different, hardened. Before, she was so innocent and soft. She looked angry. The chef’s tunic she wore was tattered and dirty, no doubt she hadn’t changed since the sanctuary fell. Her hair was pulled back, something she rarely did.

She saw Babette and Nazir first, and her eyes softened. Then her gaze strayed to me. I folded my hands behind my back, unsure of what to do. Cicero wanted to run to her and hug her until she couldn't stand it anymore, but I didn’t. The last time I saw the Listener, Cicero had held a blade to her throat and screamed about killing her. Perhaps she was afraid of Cicero now. Perhaps she hated Cicero now.

She handed the food to Nazir, who began to dig through it. Her eyes were still watching me as she walked towards me. She came so fast, I thought she might hit me. But she didn’t. All the Listener did was coil her arms around poor Cicero, hugging him tightly. I saw Lucien behind her, and he nodded to me as I held the Listener.

Arabella didn’t pull away from me, but I could see her kind smile returning to her face. “I’ve missed you.”

Looking down at her, I couldn’t control myself, overwhelmed with the love I had for her. I gripped her face, pressing my lips against hers rather forcefully. Realizing I may have hurt her, I pulled away from her. Arabella blinked at me, her brow furrowed in confusion, but her pale eyes betraying that she felt it too. She reached up on her toes, kissing me again.

Remembering that Babette and Nazir were watching, we pulled away from each other. They stared at us, one of Nazir’s eyebrows raised, and we separated at least a foot.

I cleared my throat and rubbed the back of my neck. “Cicero has missed the Listener very much. Thank you for bringing Mother to me.” I was excited to see everyone, but I had felt so empty without Mother nearby.

“Mother needs you, Cicero.” The Listener said. Babette and Nazir nodded from behind the Listener. 

And I realized, in that moment, that I was in love with her, and love was an emotion I didn’t know I possessed. 

And it hurt, it burned and stung and ached in my chest. But it felt so good, to love her. 

And so, I did.


	8. Cicero's Year of Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay, here's some good Cicabella! I know it's been a friggin' long time, and I've wanted to post this for so long. It's easily one of my favorite things I've ever written, and I'm so excited to share with you all.
> 
> You will notice that some of the content sounds familiar. That is intentional (insert evil laughter).
> 
> You may notice a few point-of-view related issues. That is because this was originally in third person, but I'm not sure why I did that and I edited it out. If I missed a few, lol sorry.
> 
> This is probably as happy as this fic is going to get, so....enjoy it while it lasts! Ily devitameatball here's cicabella for you.

“Get the hell off of me, Cicero!” she shouted, tears in her eyes as she struggled for breath. “Please!”

I laughed as she squirmed, desperate for freedom. “Beg all you want, woman. There’s no stopping me.” I lowered my lips to her ear. “There’s no stopping…the tickle monster.”

She squealed again, tears rolling down her face as she continued to laugh. I tickled her sides, kissing her face as she kicked beneath me. She gasped for air around her wild gales of laughter, a sound that I’d heard so little of since the Falkreath sanctuary burned. When we’d first met, which seemed so long ago to me then, Arabella had been a creature of laughter. It was because she craved company, and she’d been by herself for so long, she’d forgotten what it was like to share a laugh with someone. So I had made it his mission to make her laugh whenever I could after Falkreath, because Arabella didn’t really seem like Arabella anymore.

After a moment, out of fear she may actually wet herself like she threatened, I rolled onto my back, staring up at the sky alongside her. We were quiet for a long time, smiling to ourselves and pondering our own thoughts. These were the moments that I savored the most, when I was absolutely silent beside her, because the laughter in my head was absent when I listened to her breathing. Just her presence made me sane, and I loved her for it.

I looked back toward her, admired her flushed cheeks in the warm air of the Rift. We would reach Riften in the early morning, and I knew she was eager to visit Balimund. He’d always been a father to her, after he took her in when she was thrown from the orphanage, and I knew she missed him terribly. Though her family was with the Dark Brotherhood, Balimund had been the first person to care for her without knowing anything about her, to show the same kindness Arabella had shown everyone she’d ever met.

“It’s been a long year.” she mumbled. I knew she wanted to sleep, but she was too afraid of the night terrors she had. She never told me what she dreamed, but I imagined it was the fire in Falkreath, the smoke and the screams and the death. I spent many nights holding her while she screamed in unconsciousness, trying to soothe her pain and rock her back to sleep. After so many months, though, she stopped sleeping, and I was willing to sacrifice my own slumber to stay up with her.

“It has.” I said, rolling onto my side and propping myself up on my elbow. “Do you regret anything? Any part of your life?”

“Mm.” she mumbled as I grazed her jawline with her fingertip. I knew she craved contact of any variety after spending so much time alone in the fields of Skyrim, and I understood that whole-heartedly. Stay by yourself for a while, and one can forget what it feels like to be held, to be near someone. “I would have stayed with Balimund, I think. I wouldn’t have left him.” she said quietly, shutting her eyes as I traced the perimeter of her face. “I didn’t learn anything in my years wandering Skyrim, other than that I never should have wandered.” She opened her eyes and kissed the tip of my finger when I touched her lips.

Her teeth were crooked on the bottom, sort of overlapping where they shouldn’t have. I touched her face, noting that the scars were my favorite part of her features. The dark one on her neck hadn’t changed, and neither had the one on her cheek, left by that foul contract so many years ago. My favorite scars, the three that decorated her left eyebrow, were still exactly where they were supposed to be, and I ran my thumb over them. The raised flesh felt familiar under the pulse of my thumb, and I smiled.

Her eyes stayed locked with mine, watching me trace the imperfections of her face. “What about you? Do you regret anything?”

I sighed, his words coming faster than his thoughts. “I would have saved my mother.” I usually kicked myself for slipping up and providing personal information to her, but this time, I didn’t. I loved when she told me things about herself, so why shouldn’t I allow her the same pleasure of knowing?

Her brow furrowed. “Did she die?”

“Yes.” I said, kissing the tip of her ear, which her half-elf blood left just barely pointed. “She didn’t deserve death. I wish I could have saved her from it.”

I knew that Arabella wanted to press me, to know the entire story that came along with that fragment of Cicero, but she didn’t because she knew I wouldn’t like that, and I loved her even more for that. Instead, she touched my face. “I’m sorry, Cicero.”

  
  
  


“I don’t know what you’re complaining for.” she grumbled as we approached the market stall. “If you hadn’t purchased them, I wouldn’t be in this predicament.”

I rolled my eyes, shaking my head when I failed to suppress a smile. “Listen, woman. I wouldn’t have purchased them if I knew you were going to lose your mind over them.”

Several weeks before this particular journey, I had traveled to Markarth to spend some time with some friends I had made on contract, the Forsworn. While wandering the streets of the city, I met a kind woman who had offered me some candy, and I’d purchased it for Arabella because I knew she’d like it. Though Arabella very rarely consumed sugar, since sugar was not a luxury that came with growing up in an orphanage and Balimund was a Nord with no interest in anything that didn’t taste bland, she did enjoy a sweet snack from time to time. Contrariwise, I lived for sugar, and I made sweetrolls the main course in several of the meals I prepared for myself. I thought Arabella was crazy for turning her nose up at most anything that had any flavor. 

Arabella was very fond of peanut butter, however, and I frequently added it to her oatmeal or smeared some across her bread before I gave it to her. I didn’t do it entirely because I knew she liked the taste, but also because I loved the little smirk she rewarded me with when she saw that I’d added peanut butter to something, quite simply because it showed her how well I knew her.

It was for this reason that when the kind market-woman advertised little balls of peanut butter coated in chocolate and then in a multi-colored candy shell, I purchased a small bag to bring back to Arabella, thinking she’d pop a few in her mouth every couple of days. However, if I had known that part of the reason Arabella didn’t eat sugar was because she was an  _ addict _ , I probably wouldn’t have brought any to her, or I at least would have saved them for when she was mad at me.

After eating the entire bag in one sitting, Arabella had dragged me to Markarth to identify the woman who sold me the candy so she could purchase the lot. I was beginning to worry that Arabella may physically harm me if I couldn’t find the market-woman, so my heart sort of palpitated when I realized the woman’s stall was absent from the market.

I placed my arm around her shoulders, drawing her close to me. “You know, just a few days ago when I was here, I was thinking about how much you would love this place.” I said, raising an eyebrow to praise myself for deciding to distract her now rather than after I told her there would be no candy.

She wrinkled her nose. “I hate Markarth. Why would you think I would love it?”

I racked my brain for something to say. I pointed to the waterfall just barely visible in the distance. “That.”

Arabella raised her own eyebrow. “What is ‘that’?”

“Um, a waterfall.” I said, panicking at the thought of having to explain what a waterfall was to the Listener.

She blinked at me. “Do you take me for a simpleton? I know what a waterfall is, Cicero.”

I panicked again, thinking for just a moment that perhaps she could hear my thoughts. Then, I laughed, more at myself than at her, but still a little for both. “Of course not. But the waterfall made me think of you.”

Arabella smiled a little, staring up at me curiously. “Okay, but why?”

“Because you seem like someone who would like waterfalls.” I said casually.

She raised her eyebrows, pursing her lips and causing her dimples to pop out. “Uh-huh. Yes, I see the resemblance.” She held her index fingers and thumbs to form a rectangle, shutting one eye as she peered through the shape she’d formed and out at the waterfall. “Oh yes, I look at this waterfall and I see my entire life. I see my mother and my father, I see my grandchildren and my achievements and my failures, and you can’t find the woman, can you?”

I blinked at her as she lowered her hands, folding my own hands behind my back as I rolled back and forth on the balls of my feet. “My sources tell me that the stall is gone.” I said, looking up at the sky. “My sources are also saying that you shouldn’t be angry, because I didn’t tell her to move.”

Arabella snickered, shaking her head as she turned back toward the gate. “ _ My _ sources apologize for dragging you all the way out here for nothing.”

I faltered because I’d thought she’d tease me about it instead of simply giving up, and then I’d do my whole ‘oh please Arabella you know I’m great’ routine, and I’d earn a kiss and a playful shove. So, instead of following her out of the city, I hooked my arm through hers to spin her around, then I scooped her up and carried her across a bridge connecting two of the ruins the city was built upon.

She wiggled in my arms. “Cicero, what are you doing?”

“Carrying.” I said with a smirk, cocking my head to the side. “Gods, woman. You’ve never heard of waterfalls, you don’t know what carrying is. Next you’ll tell me you don’t know how to breathe. You’re a bit too old to expect me to teach you that, too.”

“Put me down.” Arabella laughed. “This is degrading.” I ignored her request and continued to carry her, and she finally relaxed, choosing to remain indifferent toward the stares we were earning from the people who they passed by.

“You know,” I began. “When I was young, and I mean really young, my mother used to bake these pastries for my brother and I to eat after supper. They were warm and puffy, but the cream on the inside was always cold, and I could never figure out how she did that. It was like magic.” I shook my head. “By Sithis, they were immaculate. They were my favorite part of every meal.”

“You have a brother?” Arabella asked me, her eyes wide with curiosity about the entire story.

“No.” I said simply, smiling and shaking my head.

Arabella understood that I meant I didn’t want to talk about having a brother, so she sighed as she rested her head against my shoulder. “So, what made you think of the pastries?”

I set her down outside of a stone building, keeping my hand on her back because I craved to be close to her. “This is Arnleif and Son’s Trading Company. It’s owned by a woman named Lisbet, who inherited the shop after her husband died.” I clapped my hands once for effect. “Now, I have heard rumor that she is a cannibal who killed her husband and ate him because he ‘had great taste’, but she bakes these pastries that taste very close to the ones my mother used to make, and I get one every time I’m here.”

Arabella was dumbfounded by the amount of information I was giving her about my past, and I knew that because she was making the face she always made when I talked about my life, which was somewhere between confused and honored. Slowly, a smile crept over the lower half of her face. “You trust the cooking of a cannibal?”

“A  _ possible  _ cannibal.” I corrected, and I laughed quietly as I shrugged. “I’ve never met anyone else who made anything even close to my mother’s pastries, and I indulge my need to remember every once in awhile, even if it’s not exact.”

She smiled even bigger, but then she shrugged, choosing indifference over inquiry. “Well, if you say they’re good, they must be. I’d like to try one, if you’d let me.”

Her words set me off-balance for a moment, not because it sounded like she needed my permission to eat, but because she wanted my permission to understand a part of my past that I’d never shared before. So, I smiled and pushed the door open for her, following close behind as the scent of baked goods wafted through the air.

  
  
  


She outstretched her arms, rolling her head back and shutting her eyes. “I love the sunlight.” she said simply. “I saw so little of the sunlight when I was young, and I savor it now.”

I looked up at her from where I sat, from which I’d been watching her walk along the coast of Skyrim bordering High Rock before we returned from contract. As a duo, we frequently lollygagged before we returned home, and this was one of our favorite spots if we had to travel to Solitude. I loved the cold, and Arabella loved the water, and we both enjoyed the quiet. On this particular morning, the sun was out, threatening to melt the snow that surrounded the Pale, but simply warming the Listener up as she walked about mindlessly.

She moved toward me, taking slow and even steps to reach me before plopping down in the spot beside me and looking out at the water as it lapped against the shore. It was freezing so far north, and we both had been bundled in several layers of clothing before the sun peaked out from behind the clouds. I pulled my hat from my head, folding it and placing it in the pocket of my coat, which was placed neatly beside me on the ground.

My brow furrowed as I processed her words. “Why not?”

“Oh, I was punished a lot in the orphanage.” she said nonchalantly, as if it were common knowledge. “My headmistress said I was ungrateful when I asked too many questions. She shackled me to the wall in the broom closet when I spoke out of turn or indulged in curious thoughts, like why I had to remain in an orphanage in the first place.”

I jerked my head back, surprised not by the words, but by the way she said them. It was so casual, the way she admitted to a dark element of her past. Arabella very rarely spoke so fluently about her years in Honorhall, and I had always assumed she didn’t speak for good reason. 

“For how long?” I asked, genuinely needing to know because of the distant look that suddenly plagued her eyes.

She shrugged. “Weeks, sometimes.”

“What did you do?” Me heart was pounding, my lust to end the lives of those to hurt children boiling beneath the surface of my skin. 

She kicked a rock with her foot, nudging it out of the way as she scratched the side of her little nose. “Well, if I cried, they punished me further, so I just had to be quiet. If I was quiet for long enough, they let me out.” She pursed her lips. “They beat Mikael for sneaking food in for me. He kept track of when they forgot I was in there and made sure I ate. He fed me and then snuck back to bed.”

My skin crawled, and I wanted desperately to hold her, but I knew that Arabella was prideful. I didn’t want her to think that I pitied her. “Does it bother you to think about it now?” I asked instead.

“No.” she said, reaching for my hand and pulling my arm to cradle it against her chest. “I just appreciate the sunlight.”

  
  
  


Her head rested comfortably against my bare chest, her fingers absentmindedly twirling a piece of my long hair. She was warm, the warmest thing I’d ever held because he never let anyone get this dangerously close to him.

Most of our year of summer was strictly platonic. Though we were both aware that we had feelings for each other, we’d been cautious about what lines to cross and which lines to stay the hell away from. As we grew closer, which was basically morphing into one person at that point because we were very close before Dawnstar, the lines began to blur. So I stopped worrying about lines and simply did what we both felt comfortable doing, and that was to be together.

I had decided a long, long time before then that I wasn’t capable of possessing emotions like love. The only people I’d ever loved were my mother and Julius, and their images had both been destroyed by the very person I feared I was becoming. It was hard to look at myself in the mirror and see my father’s face, because deep in my heart I wanted to be anything but the man who killed my mother. What was worse, though, was that I began to see my father in myself. The way I would say certain things, the expressions I would catch myself making. I couldn’t touch a mug of mead because I was worried that if I started drinking, I wouldn’t stop, and the possibility of me being a mean drunk was too likely and too horrifying for me to even test those boundaries. My father had squashed every ounce of love I ever felt. It died with my mother and Julius, and I buried them side-by-side on my father’s farm in Bruma.

But I did possess such weak emotions, though, and I found them in Arabella. She awakened parts of me that I’d put to sleep long before I met her. She brought to life my old self, the man I was before the Cheydinhal sanctuary fell, before Augustan died and before I handed my sanity to the Night Mother. She made me feel like myself, and it was hard to keep myself from showing her that I loved her.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked me, her voice like melted gold to my ever-listening ears.

I smiled softly, tracing her spine with the tips of my fingers. “I have never loved another person the way I love you.”

And it was true. I loved the crooked smile she gave me when I said something she thought was funny. I loved the sound of her voice, the way her accent skewed words like ‘sanctuary’ and ‘together’ and ‘Listener’. I loved the way her hair smelled, loved the way it felt in my hands when I reached out to touch it. And all I wanted to do was sit with her. I wanted to hold her. I wanted to entwine our fingers and kiss the back of her hand. I wanted to study her face while she slept in my arms. I wanted to count the breaths she took, count the number of times she blinked. I wanted to hear her laugh, because it was my favorite sound and I dreamed of hearing it. I wanted her to be mine; I wanted nothing more than for her to be mine always.

She smiled, I felt it on my skin, but she chose to retort with a sarcastic remark, rather than indulge my need for her to say she loved me too. “Really, now? The sly, clever Cicero loves?” she kissed his chest. “I’m shocked.”

“The sly, clever Cicero loves only you, Arabella.” I said, rolling my eyes inwardly and smiling stupidly on the surface.

She laughed. “You don’t desire a little variety in your life?” She lifted her head to look at me, resting her chin on my ribcage. “You’re attractive. I’m sure you’ve had plenty of women in your time. You could have plenty more.”

I shook my head. “I only want you.”

“And what if I disappear?” she asked. “Then, what will you do?”

“Why are you asking so many questions, woman?” I asked, laughing as I spoke. “Do you doubt the love I have for you?”

Arabella smirked. “No.” She rested her forehead against my chest. “I just want to know what you’ll do when I’m gone.”

“Where are you going?” I asked, my tone no longer playful. I’d always worried for her. I’d always worried that one night, I wouldn’t wake to her screaming because she’d decided to take her life rather than endure another night terror. I’d always worried that I’d find her on the floor of her room hyperventilating the way she used to, and giving up because the struggle for air was too difficult. I’d always worried that she’d really think about the things that had happened to her, and she’d decide that she didn’t want to exist in a world where the bad did.

And so when she spoke like this, I always tensed a little, unsure of whether or not it was a question to spark concern. “What are you talking about, Arabella?” I questioned, using my fingertips to lift her face so I could look at her. “You’re scaring me.”

“It’s not my intention to scare you, dearest.” she said, tracing my lips with her index finger. “I can’t imagine myself outliving you. I just wonder what you’ll do when I die.”

I pushed her hair away from her forehead, exposing the entirety of the beauty I saw in her scarred face. “I’ll never love again.”


	9. Cicero Always Understands...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry.

I was thirty-two when she skipped supper. I’d wandered down to her bedroom in the Dawnstar sanctuary, eager to understand why she was avoiding me. It had been two weeks of her silence, her sadness. It was contagious when she was sad, and I couldn’t stop myself from empathizing with her because I loved her.

I opened her door, and she was curled up in her bed in the dark. She wasn’t sleeping, though, and I knew that because when the light from the hall just barely illuminated the room, it reflected off of her open gray eyes.

I shut the door behind me, lighting the candles around her room to guide my path to the edge of her bed. I ran my hand over her face, traced the scars on her cheeks, and I waited for her to look at me.

She finally did, and she sat up in bed to level herself with me. Her dark hair was tangled, the braids that kept her hair away from her face coming loose. Her cheeks were red, her eyes swollen and puffy because she’d been crying for hours.

“I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.” I said to her, placing my hand against the side of her face. “I don’t know what you need, and I don’t want you to be sad anymore.”

She wiped her face, offering me a soft, fake smile. “It’s nothing, dearest. Don’t worry yourself about it.”

“It’s not nothing.” I said, shaking my head. “If it hurts you, it’s not nothing. Your pain is my pain, Arabella.”

She chewed the inside of her cheek, one of her nervous habits that drove me mad, but it caused the dimples that were barely visible to pop out. I grazed them with my index finger, curious as to when they chose show themselves and when they didn’t. 

Finally she looked at me, her eyes welling up with tears. “You won’t be mad, will you?”

“I don’t think so.” I said, though I did doubt myself. The laughter was relatively quiet when I was with her, but I never promised not to be angry because I didn’t know what would set the laughter off.

She nodded, swallowing around whatever was in her throat. “I was pregnant, Cicero.”

My heart thudded, my brow furrowing because I was excited for just a moment before I processed her words. “ _ Was _ ?”

“I lost it.” she mumbled, the tears spilling over the edge of her eyelids and rolling down her face. “I lost our child.”

I should have comforted her, should have held her because she was in more pain than I was. But I didn’t because I was angry, and I had said I wouldn’t be. I shifted away from her, resting my elbows on my knees and burying my face in my hands.

I heard her crying, but I didn’t move. I just sat with my head in my hands and waited for the anger to pass. She put her small hand on my shoulder, trying to regain my attention. “Cicero, I’m…I’m so sorry.”

Her apology made me angrier. I couldn’t understand why she would apologize for something that wasn’t her fault. But she could have told me. She should have said something, other than ‘I’m not hungry’.

I looked up at her, shaking my head and shrugging because I was confused. “Why did you keep this from me?”

She blinked, unsure of why I had asked. “Because…I lost our  _ child _ , Cicero. I can’t bear to think about it, and I didn’t want to put that on you, too.”

“ _ Our _ child. It was my child too, Arabella.” I said, my eyes narrowing as I looked at her. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t—I didn’t want you to be disappointed in me.”

My jaw dropped, rage fluttering in my chest as she stared at me so helplessly. “Disappointed? What do you take me for, Arabella? Some heartless, cruel man who doesn’t understand that sometimes women miscarry?”

She shook her head slowly. “Not that.”

“Then what?”

“I lied to you when I said I was going to visit Mikael last week.” she said quietly. “I went to Whiterun, but not to the Bannered Mare. I went to the Temple of Kynareth because I wanted to know…”

I blinked at her. “Know what?”

She smiled half-heartedly. “I can’t have children. They said there’s no way. It’s not possible.” She released a long sigh. “I tried to talk to Mikael about it, but he was…well you know how he is.”

“Were you going to tell  _ me _ ?” I demanded. “Were you going to let  _ me _ know that you lost a child that I helped create?”

“I mean…of course I was.” she stammered. “I don’t want the entire sanctuary know that I can’t do the things I’m supposed to be able to do. I needed to process it for myself.”

“What are you talking about?” I asked. “What are you supposed to do?”

“I was supposed to be able to carry a child, Cicero. Women are supposed to be able to carry children.” Her face contorted to convey anger and disgust. “Healers are supposed to be able to save people. I couldn’t save our child. I couldn’t save our sanctuary. I couldn’t save Veezara.”

“What does Veezara have to do with our child?” I practically yelled.

She glared at me, her jaw set as she shook her head. “There is no child, Cicero.”

“There’s not a child because you can’t carry one, and you didn’t tell me.” I said, and the moment I did, it broke her. I didn’t mean to hurt her, I was just angry that she’d kept something so colossal from me. 

I touched her arm, trying to comfort the cries she produced because I’d just hurt her far more than I ever had before. “Arabella, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean that.”

She jerked away from me, shaking her head. “Oh no, I’m sorry  _ I _ said anything at all.” She stood from the bed, striding from the room and leaving me on the edge of the bed. “I’ll be mindful of what I say from now on. You should try to do the same.”

The door slammed, and I sat quietly in the dark of her bedroom. 


	10. A Shave for Cicero!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello! Sorry for the delay. Here's another thing.

I was still thirty-two when I watched as she stalked away from the group, dressed head-to-toe in black, as she typically did these days. I’d lost her, lost my Arabella when she lost our child. She died along with it, and I didn’t know how to bring her back.

The night terrors were worse, the screams louder and more heart-breaking, because I knew that now, she dreamed of blood. She dreamed of the only family she’d ever known dying what Babette, a  _ vampire _ , described as the bloodiest death she’d ever seen. She dreamed of Veezara’s blood smearing across the ground as she dragged him away from the fire. She dreamed of the blood of her contracts, the way it flowed away from the wounds she inflicted. And now, she dreamed of her own blood coating her hands and her dress, and the pain she felt in her stomach and in her heart.

She wouldn’t speak to me. She couldn’t, and that made the laughter louder. It was so, so silent when I was in her company, almost as if it had never existed at all. But when she turned a cold shoulder, and left me in the dark of the sanctuary, the dark of my own mind.

_ Stop wallowing. _ it commanded. _ She doesn’t want you. _

“I know that.” I whispered to myself, which caused Nikulas to turn and glance at me curiously. My heart pulsated in fear, knowing that if they told Arabella I was talking to myself, she’d work her hardest to try and fix me, as she so often did. I cleared my throat, thinking quickly of something to recover. “Did you know that the Listener is a master of telekinesis?” I asked Nikulas.

I wasn’t fond of him. Not because he was annoying or unskilled, like Thomas, but because he was in love with the Listener. He didn’t think I caught it, I assumed, but I did. I saw the glances he gave her, the way his eyes lit up when she entered the room. I saw that she was fond of  _ him _ , too. She didn’t love him, because I knew she still loved me somewhere deep in her heart, but she was fond of him. And I hated him for having her attention.

Nikulas sort of smirked. “Is there anything she can’t do?”

I forced a casual laugh. “Yes, there is. But it’s miniscule compared to the things she can.” I bit my tongue when Nikulas’ brow furrowed in curiosity, and I excused myself from the eating area to be by myself.

_ Tell her secrets. _ it cooed, the voice sweet and thick.  _ Tell her secrets, and you’ll feel much better. _

“I can’t.” I mumbled as I shut the door to my own room, knowing Arabella wanted to be alone in hers. I sighed, removing my hat and setting it on the dresser against the wall. “I won’t do that to her.”

_ What has she done for you? She doesn’t want you anymore. _

“She’s just…” I began, shaking my head at my own reflection in the mirror across from me. “She doesn’t know how to be around me right now. I hurt her.”

_ You always hurt her. _ it whispered.  _ She likes it. _

My fingers tightened against the dresser as I supported the weight of my body on my palms. “No, she doesn’t. You do.”

It giggled.  _ I do. _

I stared at my reflection, the facial hair that had grown on my upper lip, seemingly the only place I could grow it. My hair was dirty, long and stretching to my shoulder blades. My eyes were the exact same shade as they always had been, a golden brown that made my hair look redder than it should. Something about my face was haunting, the lines it wore or the angry stare above the growing mustache. It looked familiar, and that made me uncomfortable.

_ You look like him. _

I tensed. Blinking once or twice, I realized I was staring into the face of my father. It had been eighteen years since I’d held a blade to his throat, and though I’d always known I would look like my father, just as my brother did, I didn’t realize I would look this strikingly identical.

Without hesitation, I pulled the shears from the drawer below my and shaved the mustache, not bothering to wet the blades or my face in the washbasin. It burnt my flesh and drew blood, but I didn’t care. I needed to look like me.

When the facial hair was gone, I still looked like him, and I realized it was the hair. My father’s hair had always been long, flying behind him when the wind whipped the crops he was tending. I lifted the shears to cut it short, desperate to get rid of his image, but I saw my face morph into Julius, who always loved his hair short.

Struggling to steady my breath, I shut my eyes. When I opened them, I shaved the side of my head, just above my right ear to expose the piercings I’d gotten the month before. I liked the way the light caught the studs, so I shaved the rest of that side and flipped the remaining hair in the other direction.

It was original, so very Cicero and I loved it. But my eyes were still his, my nose, my chin. My cheekbones were Julius’, and my ears my mothers. I couldn’t escape them, couldn’t escape my father’s image lest I gouge my eyes out and carve a new face. I’d become him, the very thing I hated most in this world, and I’d had no choice.

And it made me hate myself. I hated myself because I knew that I was capable of hurting Arabella the way he’d hurt my mother. I knew that I was capable of shoving everyone away, to the point of desertion. I knew that I was capable of losing myself, for hurting everyone I love. I knew that I was capable of never loving at all.

For the first time, I was relieved Arabella had lost our child, because if I was my father, I’d beat my children. And they’d look like him too, and so I’d resent them. I would have been a terrible father, and so I was relieved. 

But I still looked like him, and it brought tears to my eyes. So, I swallowed my better judgement and went to find Arabella.


	11. Cicero is Forgiven!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for not posting in so long I suck hahaha
> 
> lol also I'm not sure why google docs picks and chooses what is indented so sorry for sucking

“Arabella, stop!” I cried as I tried to restrain her. “It’s not real!” 

She trembled in her sleep, her entire body shaking as she screamed in agony. The night terrors had only gotten worse as time progressed, and since she’d lost our baby, the screams became more agonizing. 

I shook her once more, and finally, her eyes shot open. She blinked profusely to reorient her sight, and her head snapped toward me when she realized I was there. I stood above her, one hand on her shoulder and one against the side of her face.

She sat up slowly, shaking her head just slightly. She wiped her face with the backs of her hands, taking away both tears and the remnants of smeared, black makeup. “I’m sorry.” she whispered, her voice hoarse from screaming for so many nights in a row. 

“Are you alright?” I asked as I lowered myself to sit on the edge of the bed. I ran my fingers through her tangled hair, trying to soothe her from the lingering pain of the dream she’d had.

She just nodded. “I’m sorry, Cicero.” 

We were quiet for a moment after that. “Do you want to talk about it?” I asked, my voice low and casual because I’d asked that question a thousand times before.

           Shaking her head, she just mumbled, “It was the same as always.” Though I didn’t really know what that meant, because she never explained her dreams to me, I nodded anyway because I understood the general nature of the terrible things unconsciousness brought her.

           And it was the same as always. She said she was going to sleep, in her own room, and she would lay in there for hours in silence. I used to think she slept through most of the night in peace, but I later discovered that she spent most of her time preceding her dreams reading a book or organizing her already pristine sleeping quarters. Then, when she couldn’t bear to be awake any longer, she would slip into a nightmare that was a never changing “the same as always.”

I, trying to maintain some boundaries for her sake, would sit by my door down the hall and listen. I used to press my ear to the door, but when I realized she wasn’t sleeping until she was screaming, I occupied myself journaling. Some days, I reread my old journals, reminiscing in how mad I once was. Other days, I edited the content of my old journals, reiterating how mad I  _ still  _ was. When she finally cried out, I rushed down the hall to wake her.

I’d given up hope that the night terrors would stop, and so instead, I waited for her to decide if she wanted to go back to sleep or not. On this night, when she laid back in her bed, I tucked myself under the covers with her. Her body was cold, as it usual was those days, and I wrapped my arms around her and held her tightly against my chest. She still trembled slightly, an after effect of the dreaming she always exhibited. I showered the side of her face with soft kisses, and she relaxed slightly. Her shoulders became less tense, and she grew comfortable beside me.

I knew she wouldn’t sleep, but knowing she felt safe with me in her bed was reassuring. She was forgiving me, I hoped, and now maybe we could go back to being us. Recently, she laughed when I told jokes, she smiled when the recruits did something to her liking. She even participated when they played their silly games in the evenings. She took contracts, she tidied the sanctuary after Nazir cooked. She was becoming more herself everyday.

But recently, she let me hold her the way I used to. She wanted to be with me again, and that knowledge brought a smile to my face before I drifted into sleep.

  
  


 

She began to sleep with her back to me, and I began to notice her scars. The scars on her face had always been my focus, what really jumped out at me, and they were the ones I asked questions about. She was speckled with scars, coated really, but I knew the story behind every single one of them. I was there for most of them, but I savored every detail of the creation of the rest.

We had often shared a bed, but she almost always slept on her back, and I on my stomach. If not her back, she slept curled toward me, and I focused on her face. It wasn’t until she began to sleep facing away from me that I noticed the scars on her back.

They were long, twisting and winding, criss-crossing and latticing across the entirety of her back. They were ancient scars, so old that they almost completely blended with her pale skin. So old that if I hadn’t been staring at her back in thought for hours while she pretended to sleep, I never would have seen them. 

Though she’d been sleeping with her back to me for a while, she was typically draped in layers of black clothing. On this particular night, where she wore a top with very thin straps over her shoulders, the very tops of the scars were exposed. Unthinking, I reached out to touch them. They were smooth, not raised as I imagined they would be.

I felt her tense, and so I pulled away. “I’m sorry. I thought you were sleeping.” I lied.

“I thought you were too.” she mumbled, not rolling over to face me. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. I just...I never noticed…” I trailed off, my fingers dusting the scars again.

She turned her head slightly, her curiosity getting the better of her. “Noticed what?”

I snorted a little. “The scars on your back. There are so many, I can’t believe I never…” I paused when her head shifted downward, staring off at the wall again. I ran my hand down to her arm, trying to keep her attention with me. “You didn’t know you had them?”

She finally rolled to look at me, for the first time in what felt like a lifetime. Her eyes welled up with tears, her lips pursed together into a thin, unreadable line. “No, I...I didn’t know I had them. How many?”

“A lot.” I said. “A lot.” I wiped tears from her cheeks as they fell, then pulled her hand to place it on my back. Her fingertips grazed the welts on my back, a permanent reminder that I was never good enough for my father. “Now we match.”

She laughed a little, for the first time in nearly a year, and she snuggled into my chest. I was shocked for a moment, but soon after, I was overcome with joy. It was the laugh that told me I had been forgiven, and I felt tears form in my own eyes.

“I’m so sorry, Arabella.” I choked. “I’m sorry about the baby and about the things I said. I should have been there for you, and I wanted to be, but I...I couldn’t understand why you didn’t love me for so long. I didn’t understand why you didn’t love me after the sanctuary burned or after our perfect summer. But I never should have said what I said and-”

She looked up at me, her small hand reaching toward my face to press her fingers to my lips. “Quiet now, Cicero. Don’t apologize.” She shook her head slightly. “I shouldn’t have distanced myself from you. I know it makes the laughter unbearable and that makes you say things you don’t mean. All of this is my fault, love. Don’t apologize.”

“Gods, Arabella. Nothing's your fault.” I held her tighter. “Nothing that’s happened is your fault.”

Arabella really cried, then. She wrapped her arms around me again, chanting “I love you, I’m sorry, I love you.” again and again and again.

And just like that, our era of darkness was over. She was mine again, and my world became a little less clouded.


	12. Cicero Completes a Contract

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cicero and Arabella complete a contract. Something becomes eye-opening for Cicero.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello everybubby.
> 
> Sorry I never post anymore L M A O!!!!!! But seriously, these next few chapters are from Before the Storm and editing everything into Cicero's perspective SUCKS BIG TIME. That's really why I haven't posted. The end of this story is written, I was just too lazy to do the editing. 
> 
> BUT I'M A-DOING IT FOR YOU, SHAHDAR. HERE'S SOME FIC, BUD!
> 
> If you haven't read Before the Storm, this might not make sense. It's from chapter 19.

           “Listener?” I said quietly, drawing her attention back to me. I stared at her curiously, having watched her silent interaction with someone I couldn’t see. She’d been having this problem for a particularly long time, and she thought I didn’t notice, but I always did. Her eyes lingered on something a little too long, often nodding yes or no silently to answer a question. It worried me, but I said nothing about it. I didn’t know how to fix it, so I ignored it. 

“Are you alright?” I asked, having gained her attention again.

           She just nodded, unfolding the letter for the final time and gesturing to the man that sat before us. “Wake him.” she instructed, earning an evil grin from me.

           I slapped the side of the man’s face several times, not exactly lightly, to stir him from unconsciousness. The elf’s eyes fluttered open, taking a moment to adjust to the room just before we’d imagined he would begin to panic.

           He didn’t, though. He just stared at Arabella, glancing up at me every once in a while as I paced in slow circles around him. Finally, the elf laughed, a low and disturbing sound as he clenched his fists, connected to the wrists bound to his chair.

“So this is it, then? This is how I’m going to die?” His voice was deep and out of place, not matching his face at all. “Who are you, the Dark Brotherhood?”

“Yes, actually.” Arabella said, holding the letter up to begin her reading. She stole one more glance at something in the corner, stopping me for just a moment before she began to speak Ulfric’s written words.

“Viarmo,” she said, earning a small laugh from the victim. “I imagine you’re tied up or strapped down somewhere, confused and scared. You don’t know who these people are, where they came from, how you got there, or where you are. It has to be intimidating, frightening, to have so many questions and no one to answer them.”

Viarmo sputtered, confused at the words he was hearing. “What is this about?”

“You’re probably racking your brain, trying to figure out which of the horrible things you’ve done was bad enough to earn your death.”

“Enlighten me then, little girl.” Viarmo spat, hatred reflecting off of his eyes as brightly as the low fire smoldering in the corner.

She ignored him and continued to read. “I want you to know a few pieces of information before the Dark Brotherhood begins whatever they wish to do. The first thing you should know is that I performed the Black Sacrament. I am paying for your death. Quite a bit of gold, too. If my mathematics are correct, and I’m confident that they are, your life is worth exactly twelve thousand septims.”

“A high price, if you ask me.” Viarmo mumbled, followed by a stream of vulgar profanities directed at Arabella.

I lost my patience as I listened to him insult her, slamming my fist into Viarmo’s teeth. As Viarmo cried out, blood trickling from his lips as he ran his tongue over the fresh wound, I leaned down to him. “You’ll shut up and listen, if you’re smart.” Viarmo was relatively quiet after that.

“The next thing you should know is that you and I have never met. We may have been in the same place at the same time on one or two occasions, but we have never spoken and we never will. You probably wonder why a man you don’t know has paid for your death, and this brings me to the final thing that you should know. Fjoli Felstead, your wife, is the mother of my children, Cassius and Karalissa.”

Viarmo was silent for a moment, and then he began to laugh. The sound was dark and consuming, as though he knew exactly what was coming for him now. He shook his head. “There’s no escaping the two of them. No matter how far they go, they ruin everything.”

“You understand now, right Viarmo?” Arabella continued for the High King. “You know all of the terrible things you’ve done, all of the pain you’ve caused. I just recently introduced myself to them as their father, and already, I know enough. Not everything, of course, because they struggle not to talk about you, but enough to want you dead.”

“I don’t give a shit.” Viarmo mumbled, rolling his eyes. The blood from his mouth, made present by my blow, had trickled down from his mouth and into his beard, which was tied in a knot below his chin. “I really don’t.”

“I would have killed you myself, and it took great effort not to. I realized that the Dark Brotherhood has a certain expertise that I do not, and they would do a much better job than I would. And now, as you spend your final moments in the company of these strangers who will end your life for me, I want you to answer the questions for them. Tell them the things you’ve done. Admit to the things that have earned your death.”

Viarmo laughed again. “I won’t participate in this. Kill me and get it over with.”

Arabella looked up from the letter, nodding to me to step toward Viarmo. I did, a blade held in my hand and a crooked smile on my face. She turned to glance at the corner one more time, and I decided finally that I was annoyed with whatever she was seeing. Finally, she looked at Viarmo, her head cocked to the side, waiting for an admission of any sort. Ulfric hadn’t provided questions to ask, so we simply waited.

Viarmo blinked at her, expecting some sort of instruction that he would likely refuse anyway. When he said nothing, the Listener nodded to me, and I drove my blade into Viarmo’s arm with an unmeasurable amount of force.

The elf cried out, recovering quickly and sitting straight in his chair again. He glared at Arabella, an eyebrow raised, daring her to do it again. She did dare, nodding tome just before I jabbed his dagger into Viarmo’s thigh.

“Alright!” he cried. “Alright!” his breath was staggered, trying not to show the pain he was obviously in. “What do you want me to say? I never liked them. I wasn’t nice.”

I stabbed him in the back. Literally, not metaphorically. “Agh! Okay! I hated Cassius! He tried to involve himself in everything. Literally everything. He never stayed out of anyone’s business. I didn’t mind Karalissa, though. She was pleasant.”

I stuck my knife into his other thigh, cackling quietly as I twisted the blade beneath Viarmo’s flesh. The elf was screaming. It had been far too long since I’d had this much fun with a contract. Not since the Jester. 

“That was a lie!” he cried. “A lie! I hated her more than I hated him. She never…she never reacted to anything I did! Cassius would at least get angry. She just ignored me!”

I pulled the blade from his leg quickly, then jabbed it into the top of his shoulder. Arabella gagged at the sight, how I could so casually stab a man in places I knew wouldn’t kill him. I could tell it was upsetting her, but that couldn’t be right. Could it? We’d done this before, on occasion; torture was a method often used for the Dark Brotherhood to gain information. There was something different about this particular occasion, though. As she became more and more ill, listening to the words of whatever it was she hallucinated, she became less interested in being an assassin. This bothered me, made me almost as angry as her not telling me what was going on with her did. But I couldn’t control myself when I was angry, so I said nothing. 

The blade was dangerously close to his neck, but not close enough. Viarmo began to cry. “I beat their mother. I still do. But I love her, I swear I love her. I try not to, but she makes me so angry, and then I drink, and then I can’t stop, but in the morning I love her again—”

I drove the dagger into his forearm three times in rapid succession. Viarmo was screaming and sobbing, shaking from the pain. He’d never been hurt in his life, I could tell, and I knew in my heart I could do much worse if I lost control of myself. I took a few calming breaths. 

“I beat the hell out of Karalissa, once.” the elf admitted. “She was just ignoring me and ignoring me and I was drunk, and I couldn’t stop myself. She told everyone that she tripped hit her face on the door, but Fjoli knew. She saw. I never hurt her like that again, but I didn’t stop.”

Arabella looked seriously ill, her eyes revealing that she may actually vomit as she watched me stab the man in the chest, in the right spot to keep everything beneath intact. 

Viarmo sobbed. “Cassius was going to figure it out, about Karalissa, so I had to try and send him away. He kept involving himself, and I had no choice. He would have killed me!”

I stabbed him some more, various locations. I didn’t even react to the man screaming beneath my blows, feeling utterly indifferent toward the admissions he made. I was simply ready for the kill, uninterested in the theatrics of it all. 

“I grabbed Karalissa’s face in the middle of the living room once. I finally got her to react, and Cassius beat the shit out of me for it. He nearly killed me, and Fjoli begged him to stop. They never came back.” Viarmo’s mouth was dribbling blood, streaming down his face in sync with the tears from his eyes. “But they did come back. They came back when I wasn’t home. Fjoli thought I wouldn’t find out, but Corpulus told me.”

Arabella finally nodded, telling me that we’d heard enough. Her hands were shaking, but she lifted the letter again to finish reading. Viarmo was crying to himself, mumbling. “I should have stopped. Oh gods, I should have stopped.”

“Does it feel any better? Does it feel any better to say them out loud, to know that someone else knows?” she read for the High King. “You should know that they’re fine, both married and happy to be away from Solitude. They have families and they have each other, and now they have me. I’m hoping this gives their mother back to them, too, since you took her from them when they needed her. When she needed them.”

“Karalissa’s married?” Viarmo asked, staring blankly. “She’s far too young. She’s just a child.”

“I hope this has been beneficial to you in some way, Viarmo. I hope that in your final moments, you felt years of guilt and regret and remorse.”

“I do.” Viarmo whispered, staring at me. His eyes begged for mercy, and I laughed. “I feel horrible. I shouldn’t have ever—”

“I hope that you feel something before this moment, because I do. As I hand the Dark Brotherhood this letter, along with promise of a lot of coin in exchange for your death, I feel guilt and regret and remorse, but not as strongly as I feel relief. Relief that my children will no longer have to exist in a world where you breathe. Relief that they will no longer worry that if they visit their mother, you’ll drive yourself even further between them. Relief that they can feel relieved, that you can’t hurt them anymore.

“And I apologize, for the pain you’ve endured. I apologize for the pain I’ve dealt to you. But I do not apologize for your death. That is deserved. My condolences, Ulfric Stormcloak.”

She lowered the letter, folding it and placing it on Viarmo’s bloody legs. He stared down at the signature, his mouth agape and his eyes streaming tears. “Ulfric Stormcloak?”

Finally, Arabella nodded to me, and I laughed wildly before leaning down to Viarmo’s ear. “Give Sithis a ‘hello’ from poor Cicero.” I whispered. Viarmo’s eyes grew wide, a frantic look crossing his face just as he looked to Arabella for help.

She lowered her head to stare at the ground, unable to watch as I twisted Viarmo’s arm to break it. Viarmo screamed in pain, the sound reverberating off of the walls of the shack and driving me into a frenzy of sorts. I cackled wickedly, running my finger along the side of his jaw to draw his attention back to my face. I wanted him to see my smile. I wanted him to know I enjoyed bringing him pain.

He begged for mercy, he screamed for me to stop, so I broke each of his individual fingers. Each pop and crack was like music, each bone a different note in a song written specifically for my ears. At that moment, Arabella pivoted on her heel and exited the cabin, leaving me to finish the work on my own.

This caused me to pause for a moment, staring at the door in disbelief. This was her job, her sworn duty and pledge to the Night Mother. How could she abandon the contract just that easily? It dawned on me, then, that she didn’t leave because she didn’t want to watch the killing, but because she couldn’t watch me do it. She was afraid of me, and that terrified me more than anything ever had. 

I hurriedly finished the job, making a few more breaks before snapping the elf’s neck and kicking his body over, taking the chair with him. I stood over him for a moment, struggling to catch my breath.

           “I’m not afraid of Cicero.” I heard Arabella mumble from outside of the shack. I felt my head jerk back, my heart dropping at the words. I turned to look at the door again, which she’d left just barely cracked.

“I already have.” she muttered, answering some question I couldn’t hear. “I’ve failed.” There was another pause as she listened to nothing again. “I have. I’m not an assassin.”

Unsettled by what I had heard, I left the shack, pushing the door open and stepping out into the crisp outside air. Arabella stood a few paces away, her head snapping rather quickly in my direction and away from whatever she was seeing. Her own vomit covered her hands as she’d wiped it away from her mouth, tears streaming down her face. She looked horrified, but if it was of me or what she could see that no one else could, I didn’t know.

I didn’t say anything, just walked toward her and wiped her hands with a handkerchief from my pocket, which I then tossed into the snow nearby. I stared at her, confused by the way she hid things from me, but I didn’t ask. Maybe because I didn’t care. Maybe because I already knew.

“Is it done?” she asked, her eyes seeking an answer that was obvious.

           I nodded, my expression never changing. “It’s done.”


	13. That's...Madness...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Arabella is CLEARLY losing her mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From chapter 22 of Before the Storm.

           I closed the door of the Night Mother’s crypt behind her as she exited, locking it again and checking the door before I turned to her. She’d been in there for hours communing with the Night Mother, but I’d grown inpatient. I needed to understand what was happening to her, and I needed to know how to fix it. She leaned against the wall, looking up at me and waiting for me to say something.

I stood before her, my hands in my pockets. “Hi.”

“Hi.” she said, smiling crookedly at me.

I took the smile as a sign, and I pulled my hands from my pockets, placing one on either side of her face.I grazed the bridge of her nose with my thumb. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you and Mother.” I wiped the tears that were on her face away.

She leaned against my palm, shutting her eyes and enjoying the utter solitude we were sharing. “You didn’t interrupt. We were finished.”

I ran my hand through her hair, leaving one hand against her face and placing the other against the back of her neck. “It feels like I haven’t seen you in days.”

She opened her eyes, her brow furrowing when she saw the sadness in my eyes. She placed her hands on either side of my abdomen. “I haven’t gone anywhere.”

I shook my head. “You have, though. You’ve been gone for a long time. You’re not here, and I don’t know where you’ve gone to. I don’t know how to bring you back.” I paused for a moment, blinking as I looked at her. “I can’t help you if you don’t tell me what’s wrong.”

She gripped the fabric of my coat, trying to hold me closer, but I stood steady. “I’m okay, Cicero. I haven’t left you.”

“You have. You’ve been gone a long time.” I whispered, pressing my cheek against her forehead. “I miss you. I really, really miss you.”

She nodded, knowing I wasn’t wrong. “I want to come back. I have to.”

I lifted my head to look down at her, my eyes hopeful. “Just tell me what I have to do. I’ll do it.”

She smiled at me. “Tell me about the Old Ways.”

I jerked my head back. “What does that have to do with—”

“Mother says it will help me.” she explained. “She told me to ask you.”

I released her, leaning against the wall across from her. “Well, where do you want me to begin?”

She shrugged. “I don’t really know anything about the Old Ways. I just know a little about the Black Hand. Festus told me once…but I can’t really remember.”

“Huh.” I said. “I didn’t really think about you not knowing. Well, the Dark Brotherhood was originally governed by the Five Tenets.”

She cocked her head to the side. “The what?”

“Five Tenets.” I repeated. “Never dishonor the Night Mother. Never betray the Dark Brotherhood. Never disobey or refuse to carry out an order from a Dark Brotherhood superior. Never steal the possessions of a Dark Brother or Dark Sister. Never kill a Dark Brother or Dark Sister. To violate any of these Tenets is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.”

“What about the different positions?”

I took a breath. “Well, in Cyrodiil, there were a lot of brothers and sisters, so there were a lot of jobs.”

“What about you?” she asked. “What were your duties? How are they different now?”

“I never gave up the Tenets.” I said solemnly, utter seriousness radiating from me. “As Keeper, I was never supposed to lift my blade again. My life has been dedicated to the protection of the Night Mother and her Listener, but the Listener has needed me to train the initiates and carry out contracts. To disobey would be to violate the third Tenet.”

She furrowed her brow. “But if I’d known that you weren’t supposed to—”

“I know that.” I said. “Which is why I didn’t mention it.”

“Nazir is our Speaker.”

“The Listener would commune with Mother to receive contracts, and then relay them to the Speaker. The Speaker decided who received what contract.”

“So we have that part right.” she said, nodding to herself. “And what about me?”

I shrugged. “Honestly, I met the last Listener just once. She stayed in the Cheydinhal Sanctuary for a few days to discuss reopening another sanctuary with Rasha.” Cicero cleared his throat after saying the name. “Alisanne Dupree lived on her own in Bravil, her own private residence, so she really only left to relay contracts to Speakers.”

“She wasn’t an assassin?”

I shook my head. “Not after she became the Listener.”

She furrowed her brow again, confused. “So, you’re not supposed to complete contracts, and I’m not supposed to complete contracts.”

“Well, not exactly.” I explained, folding my arms across my chest. “I suppose you could do whatever you wanted, as long as Mother approved. I like completing contracts, and the only reason I stopped was because there was no Listener.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I was appointed Keeper to safeguard the Night Mother’s body while she chose a Listener, to ensure that when she found someone to speak to, she could speak.” I shrugged. “I didn’t want to stop completing contracts, but I did.”

“I don’t have to complete contracts.” she mumbled.

I raised an eyebrow. “No. You don’t.”

Arabella turned back to the door, unlocking it and walking inside. I followed closely behind, curious as to what she was doing.

She stood before Mother again, her head bowed but a smile on her face as she spoke. “Mother, I wish to no longer complete contracts.”

After a moment of silence, her head rolled back in what seemed to be relief. “Thank you, Mother.” she nearly crooned, and I felt my brow furrow. There was another pause as she listened to Mother’s words. “Of course, Mother.” she said, placing her hand against the coffin. “I will.”

She turned back to me, and I stared in confusion again. As she did before, she joined me in the hallway, watching as I locked the door and made sure it was secure before I turned back to me.

She wrapped her arms around my neck, holding me tightly as I stood in confusion. After a moment, I hugged her back, holding her close to me. We stood like that for what felt like years, both of us silent, simply holding each other.

Finally, she pulled away from me. She placed her hands on either side of my head, guiding my face down to her to kiss me. It was a long and soft kiss, something we hadn’t shared in a very long time.

When she released me, I smiled crookedly, still utterly confused but a bit less so. “Was that all? If I’d known that you didn’t want to complete contracts, I would have told you.” I ran my hand over her hair. “You have to tell me things, Arabella.”

“I will tell you things.” I said, and I relaxed at that promise.

  
  


“You talk to someone in your room.” Mareena repeated. “Who is it?”

I shook my head, confused at what Arabella was being accused of. “Probably me.” I offered as explanation. 

“No. It’s not you. She’s been in there all day saying the same thing over and over again.” Mareena said, turning back to Arabella. The entire sanctuary watched in silence. “Are you talking to yourself?”

Before Arabella could speak, I interjected, becoming angry that Mareena was trying to make a fool of the Listener. “It’s none of your gods damned business who she’s talking to.”

Mareena laughed. “The entire sanctuary knows she’s crazy. Why is everyone trying to cover it up? It’s not like we didn’t hear her screaming every damned night. Now she talks to herself.”

“You’d be wise to stop talking, recruit.” Nazir offered as my eye began to twitch.

Arabella cleared her throat, staring solely at Mareena, but gaining the entire rooms attention. “Are you aware of what happened to the sanctuary we lived in before this one?”

I moved toward her. “You don’t have to talk about that.” I said quietly, fearing that talking about the Falkreath sanctuary would drive her into seclusion again, as it did the last time.

I touched her arm, but she jerked away. “Are you aware?”

Mareena looked around the room, meeting the gaze of everyone who awaited her answer. “It was…burned to the ground.”

“How many survived?” she asked.

Mareena shrugged. “Just the four of you.”

“That’s right.” Arabella said, nodding to her. “So you know the sanctuary burned, and that the four of us survived. Do you know anything else?”

Mareena shook her head. “No. No one talks about it.”

“Would you like to know why?” the Listener asked, laughing to herself. “We don’t talk about it because our family died. They’re dead. We don’t talk about it because the leader of our sanctuary betrayed us and cost them their lives. We had to listen to their screams and smell their burnt flesh and watched the life drain from their eyes. We had to hide in our own home after we watched our family die, and we had to wait until the flames extinguished themselves to come out of hiding.

“And then, we had to pull the bodies of our family from the rubble. We had to pull Festus down from the tree he’d been pinned to and carry Arnbjorn out of the remnants of his forge. We had to dig Gabriella out of a pile of broken wall and ceiling, and I had to put Astrid out of her own misery." She shut her eyes, shaking her head for a moment before she opened them again. "And I dragged Veezara’s limp and broken body to the main room so I could bury him with the rest.”

I panicked. “Arabella.” I said beside her, my hand on her arm. It was the first time she’d said his name in almost two years, and the first time I’d ever said her name in front of the recruits. “You don’t have to explain yourself to them.”

She ignored me. “They’re gone. They’re dead. We don’t talk about it because it was horrible. I have nightmares about holding Veezara’s body in the fire, and carrying Babette through the sanctuary, and fighting off guards with Nazir, and crawling into the Night Mother’s coffin and flying through a second story window. And I talk to myself because I’m mad. But we’re all mad now, because we saw the things that make people mad. And if that’s a problem for you, you’re more than welcome to leave.”

Mareena nodded. “I’m sorry, Listener. I didn’t…I didn’t think about that.”

“Thinking is good for you.” she said, stalking back toward the stairs. “You should try to do it more often.”

She left them all there, standing quietly as they watched me trail behind her. I descended the stairs to return to her room, where she had shut the door and become very silent. 

She  didn’t look up as I entered, shutting the door behind me quietly and moving to stand behind her. I wrapped my arms around her, holding her against my chest.

She shook her head, her breathing ragged as I choked back sobs forming in my chest. “I’m so sorry, Cicero.” she said, and my heart broke.

“You’re not mad.” I said quietly.

But I knew that she was, and there was nothing that I could do to fix it for her. She wouldn’t tell me what was wrong, ever. But I needed her to be better. I needed her more than I ever had, and I knew she needed me. I didn’t know how to bring her back, though. She was too far gone.


	14. Cicero's Foolish Heart

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cicero discovers that Arabella had an affair. Later, Cicero and Arabella discuss the future of their relationship.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LOL this is one of my favorite things I've ever written, just because it's so raw and painful for Cicabella shippers, like myself. (OBVIOUSLY I'm a Veezabella shipper, too, but that doesn't mean I don't love Cicero!!!!!) This was also pulled from Before the Storm, so if you haven't read that, you don't really know what happened already. But here it is.
> 
> Hi devitameatball. Hi Shahdar.

“Cicero, I can explain.” she called, stumbling toward me.

I laughed, wiping my face with the back of my hand. “I don’t need you to explain anything, Arabella. I’ve heard enough.”

           I left, then, turning on my heel and leaving the two of them, Arabella and Karalissa, in the kitchen of the Bannered Mare in utter silence.

The state of my chest was disgusting, my heart feeling as though it had cracked and shattered into a million pieces. I was repulsed by the thought of it, because I had always pushed women away to spare myself this vile, weak feeling of vulnerability. And so I was angry, livid that she had never told me she loved Veezara.

And gods damnit, she should have told me. I could have saved myself years of loving someone who didn’t love me back. I could have saved myself years of longing to show the woman how much I cared for her, years of trying to put what I felt for her into words. I could have saved myself years of trying to keep her close when all she wanted was to be with another man.

I heard the door to the Bannered Mare open behind me as I took strides as long as my legs would carry me. Arabella called after me, and gods damn me, the hitch in her voice when she called my name made me stop in my tracks. I turned toward her, and she immediately grabbed for me. Karalissa stood nearer to the Bannered Mare, clearly unsure of what she should do.

“You were with Veezara?” I spat at her, my voice angry and sharp.

Arabella nodded slowly, her hands on my sides, trying to hold me close to her. “Yes. I was with Veezara.”

I shook my head. “You…we kissed, and you left me in Dawnstar, then you went right back to Falkreath and slept with Veezara?”

“Yes.” she sobbed, covering her mouth with her hand. “It was more than that, though.”

I shoved her away from me. “You were in love with Veezara. So what was I? What have I been for all this time? Just a distraction from the immense pain you’re in, since the one you really loved is dead?”

“Of course not, Cicero.” Arabella said, shaking her head. “I love you, and you know that.”

“Do I?” I asked, laughing at her as she reached for me again and slapping her hands away. “You’re so broken and damaged because Veezara is dead, and you screamed every night for two fucking years because you were so in love with him. And you didn’t think that I should know? That I had a right to know?”

Arabella grew angry then. “You haven’t any right to know anything. If you hadn’t lost your mind and tried to stab Astrid to death, maybe you wouldn’t have been forced to leave. Maybe you wouldn’t have left us, and maybe the sanctuary wouldn’t have burned!”

“The sanctuary burned because  _ you _ were supposed to die in Solitude.” I snapped at her. “And maybe if that stupid lizard hadn’t gotten in the way, Astrid would be dead and the sanctuary would be fine. Then you and Veezara could ‘spend your nights under the stars’ and whatever else you two did out in the fields.”

“Stupid lizard?” Arabella shouted at me. “Stupid lizard. Veezara was your  _ friend _ and he didn’t tell anyone that you were alive in Dawnstar, instead of dead by my hand.”

I laughed. “Yeah, probably because he was distracted. You kept him plenty busy, didn’t you?”

“You son of a bitch.” She swung her fist at me, connecting with my jaw and causing me to stagger back. It was the first time she’d ever laid a hand on me outside of training, and that infuriated me. She’d broken my heart, and then she would hit me? I recovered quickly, wrapping my hand around her throat and pulling her toward me rather forcefully.

Karalissa stepped into the mix, yanking my hand away from Arabella’s throat and shoving me away from her. I was too blindly mad to think, and I didn’t give a moment of thought before I backhanded her, sending snot and spit flying away from the pregnant woman’s face and knocking her back onto the dirt.

Arabella’s half-brother was there then, and he collided with me with so much force and speed, I was worried I had imagined it. I hadn’t, though, and Farkas drove his fist into my face again and again.

I wiggled away, much smaller than Farkas and a bit quicker, and I knocked the large Nord on his back, pounding against Farkas’ face with gloved fists three times before Farkas smacked me away. I flew back and hit a stand in the marketplace, sending food flying and crushing the front panel of the kiosk.

I jumped to my feet as Farkas stood, jumping onto his back and grabbing a fistful of his long hair. I held Farkas’ head steady as I slammed my fist into his face. Farkas seemed unfazed, reaching behind his shoulder and grabbing me by the back of my neck to lift me up and throw me on the ground. He gripped the front of my coat, beating me absolutely senseless as he held me against the ground.

And where the hell was Arabella in the mix of all of this? Standing. Watching. It infuriated me further, that she did nothing to help me after breaking my heart and hitting my face. I pulled a knife from my boot, driving it into Farkas’ shoulder and scooting away, leaving the blade in Farkas’ flesh.

           Farkas just laughed, plucking the blade from his large shoulder like a toothpick and snapping it in half. He grabbed the back of my head after he tossed the broken knife to the side, punching me six times before shouting gained his attention.

“Farkas!” Karalissa shouted. “Farkas, stop!”

He did, his head turning to look at her for a moment, then shoving me back just enough to kick me in the chest, knocking me onto the ground. He stood over me for a moment, then stalked back to Karalissa, wiping blood away from his mouth with the back of his hand.

My entire body ached, and I could feel that my left arm was at the very least sprained from the fight. My chest felt heavy and bruised, my face swollen and tender. I lugged myself off of the ground to stand, immediately limping when I put weight on my right foot. 

Arabella moved toward me, then stopped herself, looking back at Karalissa and Farkas. She seemed so lost and confused, and I couldn’t understand why. I should have been her obvious choice. I should have been the one she comforted. “Are you both alright?” she called to them. They nodded, holding onto each other for emotional support more than physical.

Arabella moved toward Farkas, tugging his arm gently so he would lean down, then pressing her palm against Farkas’ wounded shoulder, a soft yellow light emanating from her hand healing his ailment and molding his skin back together.

And that broke my heart a second time. For the second time, she picked someone else over me. I laughed again, wiping the blood away from his face as he turned back to us. “Oh, sure! Heal them, Arabella!” I yelled at her. “Since you trust her so much. Since you could tell her all about Veezara, but you couldn’t tell me.”

“Your reaction is exactly why I didn’t, Cicero.” Arabella said harshly, glaring back at me. “You can’t control yourself, so why would I tell you anything that would set you off? Why would I tell you anything at all?”

I blinked at her, shaking my head and turning toward the gate and walking away. “Oh, you  _ love _ secrets, Arabella. You live for secrets. Your whole gods damned life is one big secret!” I paused, pivoting on my heel and stalking quickly back toward them as I was struck with an absolutely terrible idea of revenge. “Secrets! Of course! Since you’re  _ so _ comfortable telling strangers something you couldn’t even share with  _ me _ , why don’t we air out the rest of your secrets?”

Arabella scowled. “Stop, Cicero.”

I smiled, resting against the well across from us, placing my hands on my thighs and leaning forward. “Is the name Viarmo familiar to anyone?”

Arabella glared, and I could see the obvious unease that settled over Farkas and Karalissa. “What about him?” Karalissa asked, her eyes darting back and forth between the Arabella and me.

Arabella looked disgusted. “Shut the hell up, Cicero.”

“Did anyone tell you how he died?” I asked Karalissa. “Or did you just receive the letter?”

She narrowed my eyes at me, Farkas’ arm tightening around her. “How do you know he…died?”

I cackled. “Because I’m the one who killed him!”

Arabella shook her head. “Cicero, stop!”

I raised my hands in mock defense. “Sorry to spoil your cute little story about how we’re all wanderers who live outside of Dawnstar, and our sanctuary was seized and raided by bandits. So innocent and sweet, little Arabella can do no harm, right?” I laughed again, shaking my head at Karalissa and Farkas. “We’re assassins. We kill people for money. I’m an assassin. She’s an assassin, or she used to be, when she could keep her lunch down long enough. Veezara was an assassin too, if I remember correctly. Who knows, though? Maybe you both eloped and renounced your blades. I wouldn’t know, would I?”

“You’re…assassins?” Karalissa asked, shaking her head in disbelief.

“Not just assassins. Arabella is the leader of the Dark Brotherhood. She’s the queen of assassins.” I shrugged casually. “She killed the Emperor of Tamriel herself. Earned us a pretty penny for it, too.”

Karalissa turned to Arabella, seeking confirmation and finding it in the way she looked at Karalissa, tears in her eyes and her fists clenched at her side. “Why did…you killed Viarmo?”

“Oh no.” I said. “I did. Arabella couldn’t do it, because she knew he was your stepfather. I did the deed, and Arabella vomited and carried out a conversation with herself outside.”

“But…” Farkas began, confused as could be. “Why did you kill Viarmo?”

“Because someone paid us to!” I said, laughing happily.

“You’re with the Dark Brotherhood.” Farkas said quietly, looking at Arabella.

She nodded slowly. “Yes.” She didn’t look at them, her eyes vacant.

“Arabella has had such a hard life.” I mocked Arabella’s accent, laughing to myself as I did. “She was kicked out of an orphanage, she was attacked in the fields, her sanctuary burned. And now, she lost the only man she ever loved. So terribly, terribly sad.”

“I love you too, Cicero.” she mumbled. “And you know that I love you.”

“I don’t know, babe.” I said simply, all of the anger I felt dissolving into maddening sadness. “I don’t know anything about you. And I don’t trust you.”

“Cicero…” she whispered, shaking her head as I stood straight, turning back to the gate.

I stopped for a moment to touch her face, utterly unapologetic for what had happened in the marketplace, but very obviously in love with her still. I couldn’t stop loving her, no matter how much I wanted to, and that made me hate her even more. 

“You have hurt me more than I have ever been hurt in my entire life, Arabella.” I said to her. “Everything I have ever done has been to serve you, to make you feel better, and it was all for nothing, because trying to love you was only making you worse. Because you never loved me. Not the way you should have.”

I reached into my pocket and pulled out an Amulet of Mara, which I placed in her hand, closing her fingers around it. “Balimund gave me that. A long time ago.” I mumbled. “I don’t…I don’t think I want it anymore.”

“Don’t leave me, Cicero.” she whispered, clutching my coat and cradling the amulet against her chest. “Please, don’t leave me.”

“You’ve already left me.” I said simply, removing her hand from my coat and setting it at her side. “You’ve been gone a long time, and I couldn’t bring you back. And honestly, I don’t know if I want to, anymore.” I kissed her forehead, my own eyes tearing up as I stepped away from her. “Go home, Arabella. Mother needs you.”

“Cicero, stop!” she cried after me, but I didn’t stop. I limped away from the group, moving quickly out of the city and away from the gate. I staggered down the path away from the city gate, ducking into the enclave of a nearby farm.

I sucked in a few staggering breaths, and then I allowed myself to hurt. I let myself feel the worst pain I had ever felt as I lost the love of my life.

  
  
  
  


“Can I come in?” I asked, my voice quiet.

“Of course.” she said, scratching the back of her head and then running her hands through her hair.

I shut the door behind me, and I strode slowly across the room toward her, resting on the edge of her bed. I sat stiffly, as if I hadn’t sat on the edge of Arabella’s bed a million times before, and my eyes roamed her face as hers did mine. It was almost as if I hadn’t seen her in years, as if I didn’t really know her anymore. But I did know her, better than anyone else, just as she knew me.

I cleared my throat. “How are you?”

“Fine.” she mumbled, looking down at her hands in her lap. “And you?”

“Fine.” I said, nodding to myself.

She nodded to, in encouragement for both her and myself. “Good, I’m glad.”

We were both quiet after that, looking at anything but each other. After so many years of ease, just talking to each other the way we always could, we were at a loss. My chest was heavy as I listened to her breathing, struggling of a way to ease my way into this.

She nudged my leg with her foot, and when I looked up at her, she smiled crookedly. “How about Cicero asks the Listener a question, and she answers. Then the Listener can ask Cicero a question, and he answers.”

I was struck silent for a moment, reminded of one of the core elements of our friendship, founded on this very game. It was a game we hadn’t played in a very long time, not since just after Falkreath burned. Still, after a moment of processing, and realizing that she was utterly serious, I smiled, a small smile that felt more like the real me, the Cicero I hid from everyone in the world but her.

I shook my head, laughing to myself. “I’d forgotten all about our game, little Listener.” I mumbled,knowing my eyes betrayed the sadness I felt when I looked up at her. “I forgot all about us.”

“I did, too.” she said, nodding tome. “You can go first.”

I took a deep breath before I asked my question. “Are they alright? Your brother and his wife?”

She jerked her head back, not expecting that to be my first question. Still, she nodded her head. “That’s not the brother that’s married to her, but yes, I assume they’re both fine.” She shrugged. “It’s not like they were really, really hurt. Of course, I didn’t stay much longer than you did.”

“Oh.” I said, sort of confused. “I thought you had stayed with them after…” I shook my head. “I suppose I sort of took that from you, though. They’ll never trust you again.”

She sighed. “Even if you hadn’t told them about the Brotherhood, I wouldn’t have stayed. They’re my brothers, but I belong here. This is my family.” I nodded, rather pleased with that answer. “Where did you go?”

I scratched my nose with my index finger. “Markarth, actually. I was spending some time with my old friends, the Forsworn.” I smiled playfully, but she knew I wasn’t joking. I rolled up my sleeves to expose all of my new tattoos. “I got a few new pieces, learned some new tattooing methods. I also did a fair amount of skooma and slept with a few of the women.”

Arabella raised her eyebrows, clearing her throat as I said it. “Well, I appreciate the honesty.”

“You know me.” I mumbled, rolling my sleeves back down. “I rarely lie. Except for when I do.”  I sighed then, watching her face as I spoke. “I didn’t say that to hurt you. Just to let you know.”

“I know.” she assured me, not even angry about it in the slightest, to my great surprise.

I took a deep breath, putting my hand over hers. “Before I ask the question I want to ask, and I’m positive you know what it is, I want to apologize for the way I reacted in Whiterun.” I took another breath. “I did a lot of thinking about it, and I’m angrier with myself, for the things I said to you about him, because I shouldn’t have said them. And I didn’t mean most of them.”

She nodded. “I know. And I’m sorry for the way you found out. I should have told you a long time ago.”

I pursed my lips for a moment, moving away from her as I braced myself for what I knew I was about to hear. “What happened between you and Veezara?”

She took a breath for herself, shifting slightly on her mattress before she said anything. “After I left you in Dawnstar, I was…my mind was reeling. I’ll be completely honest, because I owe you that. I was…horrified of the things that had just happened. You very nearly strangled me to death, and then you kissed me, and I was trying to make sense of all of it. I was trying to understand the feelings I had, because they didn’t make sense to me. I should have been afraid of you, and I just wasn’t because you were Cicero, and I trusted you more than anyone in the world.

“When I returned to Falkreath, and after I convinced Astrid that I had killed you, she told me that I’d done a great service to the sanctuary and actually told me that I should take your old room.” she shook her head. “As if your room were some prize that came with taking your life. But I crawled into your bed and didn’t leave for a whole day. I just sat there and listened to Lucien, who was keeping tabs on you for me, I’m sure you noticed.”

I nodded. “I did.”

“In the night, after everyone else was asleep, Babette and Veezara brought my things from my bed I had been sleeping in, and when I was relatively unresponsive, Veezara asked Babette to leave us so we could speak. When I sat up, finally, to tell him to piss off, he told me that he already knew I hadn’t killed you. He’d lied to the rest of the family, told them he knew me better than anyone and that he knew I had killed you. He told me I had to stop wallowing, because everyone needed to think I didn’t feel so much for you, because otherwise they wouldn’t believe you were actually dead. And he was right.

“And then he noticed the bruises you’d left on my neck. They were perfectly shaped to match your fingers, and it made him furious. He…I don’t know, he was just…angry.” she laughed to herself, remembering something only she knew. “I had to explain it to him, then. I told him that I thought there was another voice in your head, one that told you to do things that you couldn’t help but do, and it was the voice that did it, not you. And I told him that I knew it sounded crazy, because there was so much bad in it, but underneath it, the bad in you, there was good, and I loved the good. I still do.

“And then, I told Veezara that I felt something similar for him that was also very different. That I loved that he was so happy and loving, and I loved how much he smiled, and I knew he would lay down his life for anyone.” She paused, watching my face for a reaction, but there was none. “I told him that I hated myself for it, for loving you both, because it was the exact way to lose you both. And I couldn’t be without either of you. I wouldn’t survive it.

“I don’t know how it happened, but something just clicked. After I’d said the things I’d said, not even meaning to say them, really, he leaned forward and kissed me, and I felt this…this relief that I hadn’t felt in years. I don’t know how to explain it, I just…I loved him. I loved him then and there, and I couldn’t stop myself.

“After that, we’d invited Babette back into the room to help move furniture and clean, because you’re a damned mess.” I finally showed some emotion, laughing quickly. “She painted a little window near my bed, because that was something you’d offered to do for me to keep me from sleeping outside.”

I exhaled sharply, furrowing my brow. “I remember that. I told you I’d carve you a window if you wanted a change of scenery.” I looked around at the windows Babette and I had created for her. “I didn’t know that that’s what these were. I thought Babette came up with it. I didn’t know they were for…me.”

“They always have been.” Arabella said, nodding before she continued. “After everything was tidy and Babette had left us, Veezara just held me for a long time, and I knew then that he loved me too. We spent the rest of that week together. We took a contract or two together, ones that were nearby, and we spent the mornings and days in the sanctuary with the rest of the family. And at night, we’d roam because neither of us slept much. We learned everything about each other, told each other stories about…everything.

“It was so easy, to be with Veezara. I was easy to love him, and that’s what I loved most. It was…like it was always supposed to be that way. To fall asleep next to him and wake up next to him. To listen to him mumble in his sleep, to roam the fields with him, to hold his hand when we walked the halls of the sanctuary if we thought no one was looking.

“We did plan to tell you. That wasn’t a fabrication to make me sound less…two-timing, when I told Karalissa. Veezara and I both agreed that we wouldn’t be open about our relationship until you knew, because you were our very best friend. We had planned to take the next contract closest to Dawnstar, after the Emperor was dead, and we would tell you everything then. We promised not to say anything to anyone until we could tell you together.

“It didn’t happen that way, of course, and you know that. You know that Astrid set me up as a bargain to be made to the Emperor’s guard, and you know that I escaped because I jumped off of the wall of Solitude for the second time. I traveled home, as quickly as I could manage, and I found Festus and then watched Arnbjorn die. And then, I walked into the alchemy lab, and there he was.

“He was broken and limp, and I ran my hands over his body to try and find what had killed him, and I found that they’d snapped his neck. And I tried to heal him, Cicero. I tried so hard, and I just couldn’t. It was the one things I was supposed to be able to do, and I couldn’t do it. And I…just cried. I held him in the middle of the fire, and I just cried.

“And it was that. That’s what I dreamed of for all of those years, when I would wake up screaming. I dreamt that everything was fine, and then the sanctuary was in flames. And then I was holding Veezara, and then it would be something else. Something different every time. It would be him holding me, or him looking down at me about to speak, or him laughing. My own mind taunted me, because I failed at the one thing I’m supposed to do.

“And I didn’t tell you because we couldn’t tell you together, and that’s what we promised. I wish we could have. I wish I could have had more time with him, because the way it ended was so unfair. Everything that’s happened has been unfair, but not just to me. To you. I’ve been unfair to you, because you were trying to help me heal, and I didn’t tell you what I was grieving. Because it wasn’t the loss of the family. It was the loss of Veezara. I lost Veezara, and that’s what hurt more than anything else. More than the fire, and the betrayal, and the tears from Babette and Nazir, and Mother’s words. It was Veezara.”

She took one more deep breath, steadying her shaking voice. “But I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I should have.”

I took a few moments to inhale and exhale, nodding to myself as I absorbed the story. There was no expression on my face, just a vacant stare above pursed lips. I ran my hand over my face, pressing my nose against the palm to will myself to feel something. Anything other than the ache I felt in my chest.

Finally, I looked up at her. “I know…I know you’re sorry, Arabella. And I can’t be angry about this because I know you didn’t intend to hurt me with it. I’ll forgive you if you can forgive me.”

Her brow furrowed. “Forgive you for…what?”

I moved toward her then, placing my hand against the side of her face. “I’m sorry I never asked.”

She shut her eyes, relaxing the weight of her heavy head against my steady palm. I felt sobs forming in my chest, but I sucked them back down. When she opened my eyes again, I nodded to her, and she nodded back, understanding that we both had been forgiven.

Then, I sighed. “What’s the Listener’s question?”

She shook her head, sitting up straight again. “How much is too much?”

Tears formed in my eyes, and she watched as I blinked them away. “I think this is it. This is too much.” I shook my head. “I did a lot of thinking about this, and I think it’s too much. I…I hate myself for the things I’ve done to you, Arabella. I hate myself for putting what I wanted first. I hate myself for shoving my way in to everything you had, for making it so you had nothing for yourself. I hate myself for causing you so much pain, and I hate myself for listening when the laughter, for hurting you just because I knew I could. I hate myself for loving you, and I hate myself for forcing you to love me.

“And I hate you for the things you’ve done to me. I hate you for putting yourself last, for making it okay for me to do whatever I wanted. By Sithis, woman, I just told you I slept with several women other than you, and you just nodded and told me you understood. I hate you for keeping secrets from me, because you never tell me anything. I hate you for being weaker than me, for just soothing me after I hit you because you thought my madness justified it, that it made it okay for me to hit you. I hate you for loving me, Arabella, because you shouldn’t. I gave you no choice but to love me.”

“That’s not true, Cicero. You didn’t force me to love you.” she told me, touching the side of my face, just barely. “I’ve always loved you.”

“I know that.” I mumbled. “But we’re toxic together, Arabella. We hurt each other, no matter what we do. And it’s because we’re both…crazy. We’re both utterly mad, and it’s not healthy anymore. It’s not healthy for us to hate each other, and love each other, and hate each other, and love each other. Hate and love and hate and love, and I can’t bear it anymore.”

She nodded. “How much is too much?”

“This is.” I said quietly. “This is too much.”

“So, we’re done, then.” she whispered, shutting her eyes as I wrapped her in my arms. “It’s over.”

“Yes.” I whispered back. “It’s over.”

And it was, as she pressed my face into my shoulder and cried, grieving the loss of something that was both so beautiful and so ugly. Because the bad was bad, but the good was so good, and we knew that it was mad to think like that. But I knew I was right. We were both utterly mad, and that’s why we held each other as we broke each other’s hearts.

And it was over, finally. It was over.


	15. Cicero's Fourth Sanctuary Falls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Dawnstar sanctuary falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW-E-WOW!!! So close to an ending here!!!
> 
> Thank you all so so so much for reading along and waiting patiently for updates! (Hi devitameatball. Hi Shahdar.) You all seriously rock.
> 
> Also WOW!!!!!!!! Thank you all for pushing Before the Storm to nine hundred hits, and Blood's Honor to almost A THOUSAND!!! i FEEL LIKE A REAL FIC AUTHOR.
> 
> Additionally, thank you Shahdar for creating fan art for this story!! It's really incredible and you all should check it out at https://shahdar.deviantart.com/art/Cicabella-Let-s-Kill-Someone-729856755
> 
> Here's the fic! Only a few more chapters!

The Black Door opened, and we all waited as the sound of crippled footsteps drew nearer to us. We were silent until we saw Nikulas, and Nikulas alone, stumble down the stairs to the eating area where we all sat in waiting for him. He tripped on the last two steps, falling forward down the stairs and hitting the floor with a thud.

We all rushed toward him, Nazir, Thomas, and I all working to lift him and move him to the table, where Arabella went to work healing him. His arm was shattered, as well as several ribs, and his face gave away that he’d taken a severe beating.

He cried as Arabella popped his bones back into place. He screamed when she set his arm, when his joints snapped back together. He fell silent when she closed his open wounds, stopped the flow of blood from his body. Then, he looked at her, his eyes wide and revealing that he had seen death.

“Where’s Mareena?” Thomas asked finally, his voice cracking as he said her name.

Nikulas only looked at me though, his brow furrowed and his eyes reflecting the lives he’d taken, one in particular catching my attention. “She told.” he whispered, blood staining his teeth a faint orange.

“Explain yourself.” I demanded. “What does that mean?”

“They found us.” Nikulas said softly. “The Thalmor found us and captured us, just before we could take Elenwen’s head. We’d killed Rulinfdil, and we were sneaking, and they found us.”

“What happened when they found you?” Nazir asked.

“They took us to the torture rooms, and they starved us and beat us. We didn’t tell, though. We didn’t tell them anything. You’re our family, and we swore to each other we would die before we let them know who we were, where to find you all. Gods damnit, we swore. She swore.”

“What did she tell them?” Arabella asked quietly, her hand against Nikulas’ face. Even though we weren’t together anymore, the sight of her comforting another man made my eye twitch. 

He was in shock, his eyes wild but focused on her. “Your name. Cicero called you Arabella, all that time ago when you told Mareena about the other sanctuary. Is that your name?” When she nodded, he smiled the same orange smile, his teeth stained and his face bloody. “I think that’s a beautiful name. I always thought you were beautiful.”

“What did she tell them?” I repeated, shaking Nikulas to draw his attention back to the room.

“They promised to let us free if we told. They promised…promised we wouldn’t die if we told. And they kept their promise. Mareena told them everything. She told them where the sanctuary was, where to find us. She gave them descriptions of what everyone looked like. She said the leader of our sanctuary had to die if the Dark Brotherhood were to be destroyed.” He looked at Arabella again. “She told them you were the Listener. She said the Listener was a Breton woman with gray eyes, and that she couldn’t be left alive.

“Gods, they let us free. We ran and ran, and we knew they were coming here, so Mareena wanted to go anywhere else. She told me she could get us to Cyrodiil, that she had family there. But she told. She betrayed the Dark Brotherhood.” He stared up at Arabella, his eyes welling with tears. “I killed her. I killed Mareena because she betrayed you. She betrayed us all.”

I shook my head back and forth, trying to make sense of everything. “How long?”

Nikulas choked on a sob. “It’s been a few days.”

“No!” I yelled. “How long until they get here? How long do we have?”

Nikulas blinked, shaking his head. “We don’t have any time. They weren’t far behind me.”

Arabella stood, then, greeting my stare. It was happening again. The sanctuary would fall, and there was no stopping it. “You all have to leave.” she told us. “You have to get out of here. Save yourselves.”

“What about you?” Thomas mumbled, tears rolling down his face since he’d processed that Mareena was dead.

“My job is to protect the Night Mother with my dying breath. I’ll do just that.” Arabella said, her voice wavering slightly.

“They won’t stop looking until they find her crypt, Arabella.” I said. “They’ll dig until they find you, and then they’ll kill you and desecrate the Night Mother.”

“Cicero’s right.” Nazir said, looking around at everyone. “Our sole duty is to protect the Listener. If she lives, the Dark Brotherhood lives, and if we have to die to ensure that, we will. Is everyone in agreement?”

Slowly but surely, everyone nodded, understanding that we would all die so Arabella could live. Arabella’s eyes grew wide, the color draining from her face before she heaved her supper up onto the ground beside her. I grimaced, wanting to comfort her, but my mind was elsewhere.

Nazir continued, ignoring her moment of weakness. “We station ourselves throughout the sanctuary, two of you guarding the Shrine of Sithis to make it look like she’s already escaped. They’ll break through it and find the ladder that leads out of here. It has to work.”

“Where will you go?” Nikulas asked, his hand against Arabella’s face.

“She’ll go to the crypt.” I said, nodding my head. “She will not fight. She will not help. She will hide.” I turned to her, staring at her and hoping she would listen for once. “You will hide until I come to get you.”

“You’ll die fighting.” she whispered. “You’ll all die.”

“I will not leave you alone, Arabella.” I said, then I reassessed. “But if I have to, if I die, you have to promise me you’ll take Mother and leave. You’re small, but you’re strong. You’ll take Mother somewhere when it’s safe, right?”

“I will.” she said. “I will.”

The Black Door banged as something rammed into it, the sound of protest and the smell of smoke creeping into the eating area. We all stood silently, acknowledging that these were our final moments together in Dawnstar. And for a moment, it was good. We all accepted that this was what would happen, and we were okay.

“Kill well, and often, family.” Arabella mumbled, taking Nazir’s and Nikulas’ hand, who stood on either side of her. We all echoed the phrase, just before the Black Door was forced open and the sound of angry men came down the hall.

The group dispersed, Thomas running up the stairs to hold off some of the Thalmor agents that had infiltrated our home. I stepped up to Arabella when it was just her and I, Babette shadowing behind her as she always did. I placed my hand against the side of her face, kissing her forehead before I held pulled her into my chest.

“I will come find you, Arabella.” I called to her over the yelling. “You can’t get rid of me, even if you wanted to.”

“I don’t want to.” she said, laughing as she looked up at me. “Please, come find me.”

I nodded, and I meant it because even though we weren’t together, I loved her. I wasn’t ready to leave her alone in this world, and so I had not choice but to survive this. I pointed toward the hall that led to the forge as I squinted through the smoke. “Go! Now!”

She did, turning and staggering toward the hallway as I heard Thomas fall. I watched as the Thalmor trickled in, their blue robes vibrant against the dark of our sanctuary. I watched as they filed into the eating area, charging at our brothers and sister with an unrelenting speed, unwilling to leave any of them alive.

I readied my daggers, twirling them in my hand as Dala-grog, old and feeble, spewed flames from his hands at several of the high elves who ran at him. Though two fell, one prevailed, emerging from the stream of flame and driving their blade through Dala-grog’s chest. He sputtered in death, gagging on his own blood and falling unconscious, descending to the Void with a smile on his face.

The flames he’d ejected from his hands set fire to the table, to the bread and towels in Nazir’s kitchen, where he’d spent so many mornings cooking breakfast for us, yelling at me to get off of his table. The fire came with thick smoke, condensed in a finite area and circulating through the air to make it nearly impossible to breathe.

           Finally, after what felt like ages, two Thalmor agents ran at me, but I was more than ready to fight for my life. I ducked beneath the swing of one elf, dipping low to kick his leg out from underneath him and knock him to his feet. My blade slipped from my hand, and I kicked the handle with my foot, spinning it just enough to set it at the right angle to stomp it into the elf’s chest. Then, I crouched to pull another dagger from my boot, then stood to catch the second Thalmor agent’s sword by the blade, laughing wildly when it severed the flesh of my hand, but yanking the blade from her and driving my own blade into her throat. I paused, only for a moment, to lick my blade, cackling at the horrified expression it left on an on-watching Thalmor agent’s face.

I bolted toward him, smiling wider because I knew blood stained my teeth. The agent readied his sword as I charged, and when he swung, I ducked. I slid under his legs, which had been spread in an unseasoned sort of stance, and I popped back onto my feet behind him. Pressing my blade to his throat, I sliced quick and clean. When he fell, I whipped my head around, searching for another victim.

Nazir had pulled his curved sword from his hip, and he lunged at the agent who charged him, driving his scimitar through the elf’s stomach and grunting as it made forceful contact. He withdrew, raising his leg to kick the agent to the ground and turning back to the room to find someone else to attack.

My heart sputtered when I realized Arabella was standing frozen in the hall leading to the forge. She was watching the battle, a look of horror on her face. I screamed for her to move, screamed her name, but she didn’t hear me over the shouting. Both of my upper arms were grabbed, and I was yanked backwards into the seize two agents. I used all of my strength to kick my legs up, back-flipping over their shoulders and releasing myself from their grasp. I punched one in the face, disorienting them for a moment while I drove my dagger into the chest of the other. When I kicked him away from me, I returned my attention to the mildly stunned Thalmor agent, pushing my blade into their jaw and yanking as hard as I could, unhinging their jaw and causing it to clatter against the floor. When he dropped to his knees, then onto his back in overwhelming pain, I stomped on his skull. I felt the reverberation through my cloth jester’s boots, and I growled through the numbness it caused, limping toward the hall where Arabella stood.

           The flames had caught the Black Hand banners that hung from the walls, engulfing the room in flames. The smoke was hard to see through, but I could make out a small Babette running toward Arabella with blood on her face, having used her fangs to kill one Thalmor agent or more. She grabbed Arabella’s hand, yanking her away from the chaos and guiding her toward the forge.

The door slammed behind them, and I caught sight of Nazir running down the hall after them. Thalmor agents followed, and Nikulas chased after them. He was barely mobile, but he hobbled along with throwing knives, pegging three of the four agents in the back of the head, causing them to drop immediately. The other he caught in the shoulder, and she pivoted on her heel to bolt back to Nikulas, who couldn’t move away fast enough. I jumped in front of him, elbowing the agent in her face before stabbing her three times in the chest. When she fell, Nikulas put his hand on my shoulder.

“Thank you, Keeper.” he mumbled, his eyes darting around as he watched for more agents.

I snickered, standing straight again. “Impressive knife work, brother.”

He smirked. “I learned from the best.”

At that moment, agents charged from upstairs, scattering throughout the sanctuary to search for us. Nikulas and I pressed up against the wall, just barely out of sight. I tightened my grip on my blade, adrenaline pumping through my veins and keeping my breath even. I lifted my dagger and readied myself to turn the corner and run out into the fight, but Nikulas’ hand on my chest stopped me.

The large Nord stared down at me, shaking his head slightly. “She needs you.”

“What?” I asked, confused in the midst of the chaos.

“The Listener.” he explained. “Arabella. She needs you. More than you know. She won’t make it without you.” I was silent for a moment, swallowing around the lump that formed in my throat. Nikulas smiled slightly, the softest expression I’d ever seen on his face. “Don’t leave her. Go. I’ll hold them off.”

I nodded, gripping his upper arm because I couldn’t quite reach his shoulder. “Kill well and often, brother.” He only nodded, knowing he wouldn’t be able to kill often on his own. I turned from him, dashing with a limp down the hall and turning the corner just as I heard Nikulas shouting to catch the agents’ attention. 

I threw open the door to the forge, blinking through the smoke to find Nazir. He stood guarding the fire pit in the corner, behind which was the false back panel that led to the three story drop, and that led to the small hallway before the door to the Night Mother’s crypt. He seemed relieved when he saw me, some kind of unreadable terror in his eyes.

“Is she in there?” I asked frantically. “Did she make it?”

Nazir swallowed. “Well, yes. But she was delirious. She wouldn’t go in so I...I pushed her.”

“You _ pushed _ her?!” I shouted. “It’s a three-story drop, Nazir? Are you out of your fucking mind?”

“She wouldn’t go!” he screamed. “I’m sorry!”

My heart raced, shoving past him to get to the panel. “Did you seal it?”

“No.” he said, just as I opened it for myself. “I knew you would get here.”

I climbed into the fire pit as the footsteps of Thalmor agents charged toward the locked door. They beat against the door, screaming for a surrender. I looked at Nazir, who looked back at me just before throwing extra logs into the fire. The flames grew higher, and he smiled to me when I understood that he had decided to burn with the sanctuary. We exchanged a nod, then my overwhelming need to make sure Arabella was okay took over. I closed the door, and listened as Nazir pushed the panel back into place.

Just as the door sealed, lost my balance, slipping of off the bars of the ladder and falling toward the ground. I caught myself, though, on the latch to open the door. It snapped in my hand, and I stood silently for an unmeasurable amount of time. I heard the door above me final give, and then Nazir’s screams as he perished. I heard the come and go of Thalmor voices, making sure there was no one else in the room before finally leaving to search elsewhere.

All the while, I stared at the latch in my hand, knowing that I’d sealed us in for good. There was no way out but to use the latch, and with it broken off in my hand, we were trapped.

Babette calling Arabella’s name in terror below me brought my attention back to the real world, finally, and I began the climb down to the ground below. At the bottom, when my feet were on the ground, I saw Babette standing over Arabella, who lay unconscious near to the base of the ladder. I reached for her, shaking her shoulders.

“Arabella!” I called, with no response. “Arabella!” I slapped her face, once nice and sharp, and her eyelids fluttered slightly, revealing that she wasn’t daft from the fall. When they drifted closed again, I grunted. “Damnit.” I muttered, then gripped her underarms to drag her down the hall to the Night Mother’s crypt.

After unlocking the door and pulling her in, Babette close behind, I slapped her once more, sending her bolting upright and into the world again.

She blinked, watching as I sealed the door to the crypt. She looked around, reaching up to touch the blood trickling from the back of her head, and she lifted her hand to heal the wound beneath her hair. I twisted the final bolt in the door, locking us safely inside the crypt.

           Arabella staggered toward the Night Mother’s coffin, falling to her knees before the Unholy Matron and placing both of her hands on the doors of the iron tomb.

           “Tell me what to do, Mother.” she cried around the sobs in her chest. “Tell me how to make this right. Tell me something to give them hope, to give them the strength to carry on.”

           Arabella seemed dumbfounded, indicating that the Night Mother gave no response. She sobbed violently, harshly, uncontrollably as she begged for Mother to say something, anything, but she didn’t speak.

           Arabella dropped to the ground entirely, curling into a ball before the coffin. She didn’t move until I scooped her off of the ground and carried her toward the back of the room. She clung to me, gripping my coat in her fists as she cried into my chest. My heart sputtered at the sight, and I grit my teeth as I limped toward the back wall.

           I lowered myself to sit on the ground, clutching her against me from where she sat between my legs. Babette joined our huddle, sitting before Arabella and resting her head against her shoulder, shutting her red eyes to rest and holding Arabella’s hand to comfort her.

           And that’s how we stayed. Arabella clung to me, shaking and crying and repeating that this was her fault, for sending them to the embassy, for recruiting them in the first place, for not dying in Solitude like she was supposed to, for climbing into the coffin at Astrid’s request, for killing Grelod the Kind.

           I stared past her, staring vacantly somewhere between the top of Mother’s coffin and the ceiling. Alone with my thoughts, I struggled to decide whether or not this was her fault. I hadn’t made a decision when he appeared, standing in the shadow behind the coffin. His motley matching mine and a wicked smile on his face, the jester cocked his head to the side, daring me to hear anything that proved that this was her fault. That she had betrayed the Night Mother.

           I shut my eyes as Arabella’s cries became quieter and quieter. As the crypt grew quieter and quieter. As the world above us became quieter and quieter.

           And it was over, finally. It was over.


	16. Cicero, Arabella, Babette.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Three assassins are trapped in the Night Mother's crypt after the fall of the Dawnstar sanctuary. Cicero has been in this situation before, but this is much different.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, first of all, sorry for the thousand emails you guys probably got as devitameatball spam-uploaded the Karalalalalalalissa fic.
> 
> Second, sorry that this chapter hurts!

Day 13 in the Crypt.

“It’s been long enough.” she said, her jaw clenched. “It’s been two weeks. That’s long enough. They’re gone.”

“We don’t know that, Arabella.” I said to her, my voice quiet.

She huffed. “Mother wants us to leave. She’s waiting for us to find a way out to speak to me. I know it.”

I shifted from foot to foot. “Maybe we should wait a little longer.”

“Cicero, we can’t.” she said, shaking her head at me. “I can’t…I can’t stay down here anymore. We have to leave.”

Babette stared at me, watching my eyes dart between them, then drop my gaze to the floor. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What is it?” Babette asked, stepping up behind Arabella. She wasn’t much taller than Arabella, but she peered at me around her upper arm.

I swallowed, cleared my throat, swallowed again. I took off my cap, wringing it in my hands nervously as I watched our faces. Finally, I took a deep breath. “When I designed the seal for the door in the fireplace, my intention was for it to be one way. You couldn’t get in unless you used the secret release beneath the forge, beneath the fire. I had thought…I thought Arabella would hide, and I would come back for her. But if I were to die, there would be a latch from the inside, one that would release the seal and allow her to escape.”

“Okay…” she said, her eyes narrowing.

“When…when I found Nazir, and he told me he had pushed you in, I panicked. It’s a three story drop, Arabella, and I knew a drop from that height, at the right angle, could kill you.” I cleared my throat again. “So I climbed in, and I sealed the door. And I heard Nazir become engulfed in the flames and burn, or the Thalmor got through the door...but I heard Nazir screaming and I slipped.”

“You…slipped.”

“I caught myself.” I mumbled.

She nodded slowly, drawing a conclusion. “You caught yourself on the latch, didn’t you?”

I looked up at her, my jaw set. “I broke it. The only way out is to unseal it from the outside.”

Babette blinked at me. “So, there’s no way out?”

“No.” I said, shaking my head quickly. “There’s no way out.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Day 47 in the Crypt.

I watched her walk toward Babette, her footsteps almost inaudible as she snuck past me, thinking I had fallen asleep almost an hour ago. She sat before Babette and placed her hand over the unchild’s. It was dark in the crypt, but the lit candles just barely illuminated her face. Her lip had been busted after my gloved hand struck her, and though the fist had drawn blood and snot and spit, she’d grit her teeth and calmed me down.

Babette placed her hand against the side of Arabella’s face. “Are you alright, Listener?”

She pursed her lips, stealing a glance at me to ensure I was really asleep before she spoke. I shut my eyes and willed myself to take even breaths to mimic sleep. When she looked back at Babette, I heard her voice waver. “Don’t call me that, Babette. Until Mother speaks, I’m not the Listener.” Then, she nodded. “I’m fine.”

“I should have…” Babette began, hearing my own voice hitch. “I should have stopped him. I should have helped you.”

I wasn’t in control of myself down here in the dark. I couldn’t control myself sometimes, when it was too quiet, and I hurt them. I hurt her. I hurt Arabella.

She shook her head slowly, placing both of her hands on either side of Babette’s face. “Babette, you’re the kindest soul I’ve ever met, but you can’t be kind down here. We’re stuck, and I don’t know for how long, but I need you when we get out. I’ll need you, and if you’re kind, he’ll hurt you. You won’t survive.” She glanced at me again, her gaze deepening as she furrowed her brow. “I need you to promise me two things, Babette. I need you to promise, and never break your promise.”

“Of course, Arabella.” the unchild said, nodding quickly and keeping my voice low. “I’ll do anything.”

She nodded too, hers more solemn. “Never say anything to set him off, and if that means not speaking at all, that’s what we have to do.” She lowered her gaze. “I know he hates the silence, and it makes the voice in his head louder, but if we keep saying things that trigger the voice, we’re in trouble.”

“Okay.” Babette said. “What’s the other thing?”

Arabella’s face fell, even lower than it already had. “No matter what he says, no matter what he does, never stand in his way, Babette.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Day 97 in the crypt.

“I can’t bare it anymore, Mother.” She whispered, her hands on the coffin doors. “Say something. Say anything. Something simple, something elaborate.” She paused a moment, sniffling as she waited to hear the Night Mother’s voice. “Please, Mother. I’m sorry. It’s my fault we’re here, and I know that. And I’m sorry.”

“It’s my fault, Arabella. Not yours.” I said from across the room. I sat near her, though not beside her. “I broke the latch. I sealed us in.”

“It’s my fault the sanctuary burned.” she mumbled. “Mother told me before we spoke to the High King that the contracts were mine to complete, and I renounced my blade. I directly disobeyed an order, and that’s why the sanctuary burned.”

“Arabella, don’t say that.” Babette said quietly, glancing at me.

“I dishonored the Night Mother.” Arabella said, a bit louder. “To do so is to invoke the Wrath of Sithis.” She turned to us then, tears in her eyes. “This is my fault. They burned because I violated a Tenet.”

My fists clenched, and I looked away from her. The room was silent after that.

_ “She violated a Tenet.” _ he whispered, his voice soft and sultry. Teasing me.  _ “She’s a traitor.” _

“She’s not a traitor.” I grumbled, covering my face with my hands. I rubbed my forehead, willing myself to stay sane.

_ “She’s betrayed the Dark Brotherhood.” _ he cooed.  _ “She betrayed the Night Mother.” _

“No. She hasn’t.” I whispered harshly. “She hasn’t. She hasn’t.”

_ “Do your duty.” _ he said, more an order than a request.  _ “Protect the Night Mother.” _

The room began to fog as I looked up at Arabella, her eyes wide with horror.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Day 267 in the crypt.

“Tell me what I did!” I begged, shaking as I stared at them.

Arabella was facing away from me, toward Babette, as she hurriedly wiped her face. I watched her, my own tears blurring my vision as I asked again.

Babette opened her mouth to speak, to tell me exactly what I had, but Arabella shook her head. And Babette closed her mouth, obeyed because she’d promised not to say anything.

“Please, tell me.” I cried. “I can’t remember anything. I don’t know…I don’t know how long it’s been.” I had just come out of one of my manic periods, where I did the laughter’s bidding without question. The fog was completely gone for the first time in what felt like a very long time, but I couldn’t remember. Arabella shook her head again, wiping her mouth on the sleeves of her dress.

“Just tell me how long.” I asked, audibly crying now. I took a step forward, and Arabella flinched at the sound. It took all of my strength not to reach for her, because I wanted to so desperately. But I didn’t, because I didn’t want to scare her.

“It’s been almost a week.” Babette said.

“Stop, Babette.” Arabella said in a hoarse voice.

“A week?” I mumbled, stepping toward Arabella and wrapping my arms around her shoulders. I turned her to face me, and even though she struggled to conceal the blood and the bruises, I saw, and he sobbed. “Oh my gods, Arabella. I can’t…I’m so—”

Her eyes were swollen, one almost completely shut. Her lip was busted in two different spots, her nose crooked and broken. Tears fell from her eyes, but she stared at me. She never faltered. She never looked away from me. 

Arabella shook her head, swallowing around whatever had formed in her throat. I outstretched my hands, staring at my knuckles coated in blood, her blood, and I clenched my fists, placing them at my sides. She reached for me, taking my hand and placing my fingertips against the pulsating vein in her neck. “I’m fine.” she said, her words soft and reassuring. When she spoke, I saw that some of her teeth had fallen out. 

“No, you’re not.” I pulled my hand away from her, then I pushed her hair away from her face, leaving one hand against the back of her head and snaking the other around her waist, pulling her into my arms. I spent a moment crying as I held her, cradling her against me, and then, I looked up at Babette. “If I do it again, I want you to kill me. Don’t let me do this again.”

Arabella pulled away from me, staring up at me for a moment, and then at Babette. “No. You can’t ask her to do that, Cicero.”

Babette watched her face, the bruised and bloodied version of it that she’d become accustomed to. I held her again, my cheek pressed against the top of her head. “Promise me, Babette. Promise me that if I hurt her like this again, you’ll stop me. I don’t care how.”

“Don’t promise this, Babette.” Arabella said.

Babette spent a moment in thought, and then she nodded. “I promise.”

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Day 463 in the crypt.

My hand was around her throat, and though Babette screamed for me to stop, I didn’t. The fog was too thick, the jester’s laugh too loud. I stared down at her, my body trembling because I wasn’t in control. She struggled, her hand against my face and the other on my arm, trying to push me away.

“It says to kill you.” I said, my voice low and nearly a growl.

Her upper lip curled, and she let her hands fall on either side of her. “Then do it.” she said, her voice strong beneath my even stronger hand. “Do it. I don’t give a shit anymore.”

I faltered, shaking my head at her request for death. Then, the laughter regained control, and I raised my other hand to strike her. It was a sharp slap, the skin of my hand reverberating against the flesh of her cheek. I waited for her to cry, to bleed, to beg.

She laughed. It was a throaty laugh, a lunatic’s cackle that unsettled me enough to furrow my brow and release her slightly. 

The laughter wasn’t done, though, and I reared my fist back to punch her in the nose. She barely reacted, her manic giggles the only sound that came from her, and so the voice in my head ordered me to strike her again.

She grunted at the force of the blow, but she couldn’t stop laughing, and she shook her head beneath my hand. “Do it again.” she requested. “Hit me again.”

And that sent the laughter away because it brought me back. I waited for her to stop laughing, because she frequently pretended to be courageous or unresponsive to the pain the laughter inflicted to frighten the laughter away, but this time, she didn’t stop. She continued to laugh, a laugh that wasn’t hers because it was her own insanity’s. 

I sat back, watching the blood run from her nose and listening to her laugh like a madman. She just laid back on the ground, her arms spread out on either side of her as she laughed and bled. I looked at her, wondering what I’d said that was so funny, but no one could explain it to me, because they didn’t understand either.

But I did understand. She’d lost her mind. And I was disgusted with her because I had lost my mind too.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Day 513 in the crypt.

My eyes fluttered open, the scent of blood disrupting my sleep and urging me into consciousness. I looked around, my gaze first falling on the bindings around me, still tied to the beam that they’d secured me too when I’d nearly strangled Arabella to death a night prior. Babette promised to stop me, and she’d promised Arabella not to stand in my way, so tying me up was the best she could compromise.

“No!” Babette screamed, jolting to her feet and running toward the other side of the room.

My gaze then found Arabella, her back propped against the wall near the door as she dropped the bloody dagger to the side. Her wrists bled, profusely bled, and she relaxed, a smile on her face as she rested her head against the wall, too.

She turned toward Babette slowly, her smile falling as she lifted her hand, telekinesis willing the unchild to fly back and hit the wall with a thud.

I stared at Arabella in confusion as Babette pulled herself to her feet and ran toward Arabella again. She simply laughed, lifting a bloody hand to throw Babette back to the wall, then moving a bench across the floor to pin her, ensuring she wouldn’t be able to run again.

I understood, then. I understood that she was trying to kill herself, and I panicked. I was screaming, yanking against the bindings that held me away from her. “Stop, Arabella! Stop!”

“I can’t.” she whispered, harsh sobs forming in her chest. She lifted her hands, exposing the slits in her wrists that allowed the flow of her blood. Her face was drained, confirming that she’d been sitting there for a while, letting herself bleed out.

“Arabella, what are you doing?” I screamed, violently tearing at the rope around his wrists.

She laughed, a quiet sound as she looked past us at the coffin. “I’ve failed her. I failed her beyond failure.” She looked back at Babette, then at me. “If I die, she’ll pick one of you. She has to.”

“Arabella, think rationally.” Babette said, struggling to push the bench away from her chest. “Think about what will happen to us if you leave us. Think about what will happen to your brothers, to Balimund.”

“If I die, she’ll pick another Listener, because I’m not the Listener anymore.” she managed around her heavy lungs, struggling to suppress her own tears. Then, she laughed. “Balimund is an old man. He’ll manage without me. And my brothers want nothing to do with me anymore, Babette, and that’s sort of a low blow.”

“Look at me, babe. Look at me.” I called to her. She obeyed, as she always did. “I’m sorry for the things that I’ve done, down here and up there. I’ll die before I do it again. You can’t die. You can’t leave me. I can’t make it without you.”

“You’ll be fine.” she whispered, shutting her eyes and leaning back against the wall once more. “We’ll all be fine.”

I searched my brain for something to use, some leverage, something to guilt her into staying, because she was using her own logic, and there was no swaying that. Babette seemed to have the same idea. “What do you suppose we do with your body, Arabella? Put you in the Night Mother’s coffin?” she asked, her voice level and calm.

I was sobbing, still struggling to force my way out of my bindings. Arabella never opened her eyes. “I would never suggest you desecrate Mother’s coffin in such a manner. Just leave me down here.” her voice was soft, just barely present anymore as she faded away. “She’ll choose one of you to be her Listener, because she doesn’t want me anymore. And if I’m not the Listener, I have no p-purpose. I’m not an assassin, and I’m not anyone’s ch-child or anyone’s sibling or anyone’s lover. I'll never be anyone's mother. I just exist if I’m not the L-Listener, and I don’t want to exist without purpose.”

“You’re my purpose, Arabella.” I sobbed. “I need you.” I struggled against the bindings, which weren’t coming loose at all. “Heal yourself, Arabella. Heal yourself and we’ll be okay.”

“I don’t want to be okay, Cicero.” she whispered. “It won’t be bad. I’ll go to the Void and I’ll work to repay Mother, to make her forgive me. All I want is to serve her, and I can’t do that down here. And…I-I’ll be with Veezara, and that will be okay.” She opened her eyes then, just barely because she couldn’t hold them open for very long. “I’m sorry, both of you. I ruined the Dark Brotherhood. I ruined our f-family. I didn’t m-mean to, I just—I couldn’t k-kill anyone else. But I did. I killed everyone.”

I was hysterical, writhing against the rope. “No! No, Arabella.”

But she didn’t respond. She shut her eyes, relaxing against the wall and willing sleep to come to her. I watched her chest, counted the inhales and exhales until I couldn’t see them anymore. They had become shallower and shallower, and I stopped struggling, now sobbing because she was dead. 

I rolled to lay my head against the ground, crying her name and tapping my head against the stone floor. She was gone. I’d beat her into killing herself. It was my fault. She was gone. I felt my lungs caving in on my heart, breathing becoming more and more difficult.

Arabella’s eyes shot open, and she stared at the coffin. She blinked twice, then she nodded. Yellow light encircled her wrists, drawing the skin closed and restoring some of the color in her face immediately. She dragged herself to her feet, and staggered toward the Night Mother’s coffin, stepping over me when he reached for her, blood dripping from her sealed arms as she kneeled before our Matron.

Things were silent for a long time, and then she nodded. “Of course, Mother. As you will it.”

Then, she sat back, then laid against the cold ground. She lifted one hand to move the bench, without even looking at Babette. The unchild lowered herself to the ground, sitting quietly as she watched Arabella lift her other hand, the bindings around me untying and freeing me.

I crawled toward her, grabbing her wrists to ensure that she was no longer bleeding before I laid on the ground beside her, wrapping my arms around her and pulling her against me. I showered the side of her face with kisses before I buried my face in her neck, my sobs muffled through her hair.

“I’m sorry, baby.” I whispered around my heaving breaths. “I’m so, so sorry.”

She turned to look at Babette, blinking to apologize for the bench, and the small vampire nodded to forgive her. She smiled, then, a real smile for the first time in nearly a year in the crypt. “Mother is sending help. They’re going to free us.”


	17. Cicero's Final Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cicero wakes up from the fog of the laughter's rule for a final time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter picks up where the first chapter leaves off. It may be helpful to reread that first.

I was thirty-four the day after Arabella tried to kill herself. The day after the night mother promised her to send help. The day that help never came. 

_ “Silence her!” _ the voice had shouted, his cackle echoing in my head. He hated the tapping of her shoes as she paced around the crypt, her new obsessive compulsive habit. 

_ “Stop apologizing for something you didn’t cause.” _ The voice was hers, too. The same honey-worded voice she’d always used. She stared at me as I traced the scars on her wrist with my thumb.  _ “Don’t place the blame on yourself, Cicero. It’s not yours to take.” _

_ “You should hate me.” _ I told her, feeling my eyes tear up.  _ “You shouldn’t love me.” _

She furrowed her brow, her light eyes fixed on mine, identical in every way.  _ “Why are you allowed to love me, but I’m not allowed to love you?” _

_ “It’s not sane to love someone who hurts you.” _ I told her.  _ “It’s not sane to love someone who’s tried to kill you.” _

  
  


The fog cleared, finally, and I blinked to reorient my sight. I felt my brow furrow, thinking about the things I had seen and felt, and trying to remember what was happening just before I faded away to be with the jester.

The weight on my left arm drew my attention back to my surroundings. I was in the crypt, which was dimly lit and for the first time, filled with a deafening silence. I blinked again, looking around at the walls with clear eyes for the first time.

They were splattered with blood, coated in some places, the smell of piss and body odor circulated throughout the cold room. I shivered, my senses finally coming alive for the first time in a long time, staying my own long enough for me to understand the situation I was in. We were locked down here, trapped from the inside because I’d slipped and snatched off the latch to the exit. There was no way out. We were stuck.

We. Us. Them.

Babette. Arabella.

Babette.

I looked around for the unchild, suddenly desperate for her wisdom for some reason. She may understand what had just happened to me. I looked from left to right, no sign of her in sight, so I turned to look over my shoulder.

She was there, crumpled like paper on the floor. Her neck had been snapped, I could tell by the angle it was twisted at. A shard of wood stuck out from her chest, no blood flowing from the wound. Her face was so uneasy, unsettling and staring back at me with open eyes. My jaw dropped, and I felt my eyes well up with tears as I struggled to remember what had happened.

The room fogged slightly, and I watched as images replayed in my head, from mere moments before I woke from my trance.

 

_ I watched, as if I was hovering somewhere above my own body, as my fist slammed into Arabella’s face again and again. Babette had hopped onto my back, absolutely silent as she used her small fists to hit my face. I had fallen back, away from Arabella, and writhed until the small girl lost her grip. I turned to face her. She was already standing, a piece of broken wood in her hand like a weapon that she dreamed would withstand me. _

_ “Babette!” Arabella’s voice gargled somewhere beyond. It was like a weak sob, the word she uttered, and I had laughed at it.  _

_ Babette stood steady, waiting for me to attack her. She bore her fangs, her instinctual mechanism of defense against predators. I snickered again, lunging toward her. She drove the wood into my side, but it had no effect on me. I had picked her up by her throat, causing her little legs to dangle idley for a moment. Then, with all of the force my body possessed, I slammed her into the stone floor.  _

_ She released an ungodly wheezing sound, and within seconds of holding her to the floor, I lifted my other had to the top of her head to snap her neck. Finally, only to be certain, I withdrew the stake of wood from my own side to drive into her chest. _

 

“Oh...oh gods.” I stammered, tears rolling heavily away from my eyes. I moved just slightly to go to her, as if standing over her for a moment would reveal that I had only imagined all of that. As I moved, the weight in my arms dragged with me, finally drawing my attention to what I held in my hands.

Arabella.

Limp and unmoving. Unbreathing. Dead.

My chest wretched, and I exhaled all of the oxygen my lungs had been holding in. Then, sucking in a staggering breath, I screamed.

Her lips were blue, her face paler than it had been in life. Her arms hung like deadweight from her shoulders, sprawled across the ground before us. Her eyes were shut, her face somehow peaceful in the dead silence of the room. 

She had always been so small, small enough for me to cradle in my arms, and I did as I released agonizing sobs. I cried her name, shook her as if to wake her, pressed her face against my neck and longed to remember what had happened. But I couldn’t. Hard as I tried, I couldn’t remember what happened to her.

But gods, I knew I had done it. I felt the throbbing of my knuckles and matched the fingerprint-bruises on her neck to my own hands. I laid her back gently against the ground, pumping my interlocked hands against her motionless chest in an attempt to force some kind of life back into her.

But she was gone. 

She’d been gone a long time, and I couldn’t bring her back.

I fell back against the stone ground, sobbing as I realized I had become the one thing I had never wished to become. I had destroyed my only family. I had killed the only woman I had ever loved. My own madness had overtaken me and forced me into destroying the only good I’d ever known.

I had become my father. 

At that moment, the Night Mother’s coffin crackled, the door creaking as it slowly inched open to reveal my matron looking down at me. Shriveled and hideous, and yet somehow more beautiful than ever, her body peered at me from her perch in disgust. 

Before I could beg for forgiveness, for killing her Listener, I heard a familiar laugh behind me. 

He was a bit taller than me, a bit slimmer. His face was shadowed, but his attire was easily identifiable. Crushed velvet in a deep shade of sanguine, the trim of his coat in black and gold. His shoes curved into a point, a soft black leather that kept his footsteps silent as he approached me. I almost smiled at the sight of my old friend, my dearest companion, my greatest enemy.

But I knew what this meant, and so I shook my head as I scooped Arabella’s body back into my arms, as if to protect her, the pressure in the palms of my hands becoming more intense. “I didn’t want to hurt her.” I said quietly, and it was true. He was in control. He’d given me no choice.

_ “I know.” _ he said, taking a slow stride into the little light that was left. When illuminated, it became evident that his face was identical to mine. 

He was me. 

I was him.

I am the laughter. 

_ “You didn’t want to hurt her. But I did.”  _ He held my blade in his outstretched hand, placing it in mine before stepping back.

And I did. I killed Arabella. I killed the Listener. I killed the love of my life.

The fog became too thick, the memory of her screams too loud.

And the world became black as I brought my blade to my throat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Love you guys! Don't hate me!


	18. Coming, Mother...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After dying, Cicero is in the Void. He must face the Night Mother and everyone he has ever known.

It is dark as I descend, but far beyond, I see a pale blue light.

I walk slowly toward the source of light, a tugging at my chest guiding me in the right direction. The walls around me become glimpses of my life, flashes of my memories.

In one flash, my mother stood before the table, setting a plate of cream puffs in front of me and my brother. In another, she lay crumpled on the kitchen floor, having been choked to death by my father.

In one flash, my father towered over me with a belt in one hand, the other with a fistful of my hair to hold me steady. In another,  _ my _ fist held  _ his _ hair, my blade slicing the tender flesh of his throat to end his life. 

In one flash, my brother, Julian, handed me his fishing pole so I could bait his hook for him. I’d never been good at sitting patiently and waiting to catch a fish, but I was very good at killing the worms. In another, I dug the hole we put him in, below the very best tree to climb together, overlooking our father’s farm in Bruma.

In one flash, Augustan stood over me in an alleyway, his hands wiping away the dirt and soot from my young, freckled face.  _ “I think you’d make a nice addition to my family, son.”  _ He smiled, and so did I, because I’d never felt more comfortable around someone in my entire life.  _ “Come with me, if you want to.” _ In another, I watched him scream as the flames of the Bruma sanctuary engulfed him.

In one flash, Rasha was handing me a book to journal in, his way of healing when he lost his own sanctuaried family. In another, I watched as Garnag stabbed him to death, a smile on my face the entire time.

In one flash, I saw the jester, heard his laughter, his screams, his pitiful cries. And then, as the end drew near, his laughter once more. Merry in death as well in life. I was honored to know him. In another, he stands before me with a blade in his hand, outstretched in offering as I decided to end my own life.

In one flash, Garnag held the door open for me as we re-entered our sanctuary’s living quarters. In another, he shut the door behind him before he ventured out of our hiding place, leaving me alone with the Night Mother and the Jester.

In one flash, I drop a piece of cake into Veezara’s lap as I trade places with him to drive the wagon home from Solitude.  _ “Oh, vanilla! My favorite!” _ In another, I stand over him with my blade, having driven it into his side multiple times. _ “Brother, this isn’t you.” _ Veezara was trying to talk me down from my mania instead of protect himself.  _ “Cicero, it’s me.” _ Astrid was on the ground behind him, her eyes full of terror. 

In one flash, Nazir yells for me to get off of his kitchen table as I train the recruits, and I ignore him with a sly smile as I always do. In another, his clothes catch fire in the forge of the Dawnstar sanctuary, and he screams in pain as I shut the door to the crypt behind me.

In one flash, Babette places some cool, sticky paste over a stab wound in my thigh I returned from a contract with. I had jumped in front of Arabella when she was outnumbered, even though she had asked me to let her handle things on her own. _“Shouldn’t go saving damsels.”_ Babette said sarcastically, offering me a coy smile as she applied a bandage to my wound. _“Said no story ever.”_ I replied with a grin. _“And in this story, I saved the dark princess.”_ In another, I drive a stake of wood into her chest to ensure the snap of her neck had really killed her.

In one flash, I lay in bed with Arabella, her head rested comfortably against my bare chest, her fingers absentmindedly twirling a piece of my long hair. She was warm, the warmest thing I’d ever held because I had never let anyone get this dangerously close to me.  _ “I can’t imagine myself outliving you. I just wonder what you’ll do when I die.” _ she said, tracing my lips with her index finger. Frowning, I pushed her hair away from her forehead, exposing the entirety of the beauty I saw in her scarred face.  _ “I’ll never love again.”  _ In another, I held her limp body in my arms, sobbing as I screamed her name. 

In the final flash, I stand before the blue light beckoning me to enter. I do, and I am facing the largest room I have ever been in. The Void is not dark and abysmal, as I had imagined it to be. It is cold and blue like water, but I do not feel as though I will drown. There are people lining a blue stone pathway, and I do as my gut commands and follow the trail of people to the large throne at the other side of the room, surrounded by many smaller thrones.

As I pass them, the thousands of strangers greet me, my title and my name whispered from their lips as they nod to me when I walk by. “Most honored Keeper.” one voice mutters, their tone not condescending, but instead admiring me as I pass. The faces of strangers become more familiar, and I begin to recognize them as I get closer to the thrones.

I pass Rasha and Garnag, who both nod to me in silence.

I pass Augustan, who looks as though he wishes to reach for me, but does not. 

I pass Lucien Lachance, who calls me “brother” as I pass instead of “Keeper.” 

I pass Festus Krex and Gabriella, who nod to me without a smile. 

I pass Arnbjorn, who pats my shoulder when I am close enough.

I pass Astrid, who I exchange apologetic looks with and linger beside for a moment.

I pass Nazir, who calls me “brother” in the same deep voice he always had in life.

I pass Dala-grog and Thomas, who bow their heads as if I’ve done something noble to deserve their honor and reverence.

I pass Nikulas, who stares with angry eyes.

I pass Mareena, who smiles at me longingly.

I pass Babette, who looks past me at the wall beyond her, refusing to make eye contact with me. I clench my jaw to suppress tears as I realize two very important people are missing from the lines.

And finally, I stand before the thrones at the opposite end of the room from which I entered. I stare up at the largest throne, centered between a dozen average sized thrones on either side of it. I begin to cry as I gaze up at the Unholy Matron, dropping to me knees in combined awe and shame.

To my great surprise, she laughs, drawing my eyes to her face. She is absolutely lovely, her elven features more beautiful than any I had ever seen. Her cheekbones are high beneath breathtaking blue eyes, her lips full and her skin a soft blue-gray. She is strikingly beautiful, more beautiful than anyone I have ever seen before. Behind her, a swirling black mass has formed, and it hovers behind her in silence.

“My dear, sweet Cicero.” she says, her voice smooth, but deeper than I had imagined.

I release a long sigh as I hear her voice for the first time, after many years of remaining unworthy of her words. “Mother, it is the greatest honor to stand before you after all of the this time. To hear your words.” As I look at the thrones beside her, I recognize Alisanne Dupree, and I understand that the Listeners are seated with the Night Mother. One throne at Mother’s right is empty, and my heart drops. 

“You have honored me greatly, Cicero.” she says, her smile fading. “But you have also dishonored me.”

“Mother,” I stammer. “I am so sorry for what I’ve done. I never meant to destroy the Dark Brotherhood.”

“You have not destroyed the Dark Brotherhood, Cicero.” she assures, nodding slightly. “As long as children continue to pray to their mother, our presence remains in Skyrim.” She pauses, sighing slightly. “However, until my body is found, the Dark Brotherhood lingers in a stand-still.”

“I’ll do anything to help, Mother.” I say frantically. “I want to help fix this mess.”

“And you will, my sweet Cicero.” the Night Mother says. “To repay your family for the pain you’ve caused, you must rectify the situation you left in the mortal world. You must go back to the living realm as a spectral assassin to find the new Listener, to show them the ways of the Dark Brotherhood. And you must make sure the new generation of the Dark Brotherhood knows the treachery of Mother’s greatest Keeper, and how they must undo his wrongdoings to the family.”

My heart breaks, but I nod. “Of course, Mother. Whatever you will, I shall obey.”

The Night Mother reaches out to comfort me. Not with her arms, but in my mind. “The Dread Father and I are proud of you, sweet Cicero.” she says, the dark mass behind her picking up speed for only a moment, then slowing to normal speed again. “You were my greatest creation, my most loyal servant. Fix what you’ve done, and all is forgiven in our eyes.”

“Of course, Mother.” I say, my eyes fluttering shut as relief washes over me. “Humble Cicero lives to serve.”

“And he will serve me in the Void, now.” Mother says quieter. She gestures to the hall leading away from the large blue room. “Acquaint yourself with your new sanctuary. I will summon you when the time comes.”

The Night Mother disappears, along with the black mass behind her. Though many of the Listeners stay in their thrones, the brothers and sisters that live in the void begin to socialize as they disperse from their formal lines. Though many leave the room, a few stay to speak to me.

I am first approached by Augustan, who runs to me and wraps me in a tight hug. I cling to him for a moment, and when we separate, he places his hand against my face.

“My son.” he says, though he is younger than I am. “I’m so proud of you and everything you’ve done.”

“Thank you, Augustan.” I say, shaking my head as I grin. “I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you, too.” he assures, stepping to the side so I could be greeted by someone else.

Lucien Lachance walks by me, patting my shoulder as he approaches a Listener I do not recognize. Festus Krex hobbles toward me, slapping my back as the Falkreath sanctuary members surround me. “It’s good to see you, boy! I see you’re still a looney, like the good ol’ days.”

“I assure you, I am myself again.” I say, shaking my head. “My mind is my own. Krex, do you know where I may find-”

“Arabella, right?” Arnbjorn interrupts, and my heart pulsates harshly at the name. “Oh, I’m sure she’s around here somewhere. Probably with Veezara. They’re always into some kind of trouble.”

My head jerks back. “How long has she been here?”

“Seconds on Nirn are years in the Void.” Gabriella explains, her lips pursed. 

Astrid nods. “She’s been here a long time.”

I nod, too. They separate so I can move to the gathered group of Dawnstar family, where Nazir and Babette stood. Nikulas steps in front of me before I can approach them.

“Are you going to behave?” he asks, glaring down at me.

“Of course.” I assure. “You’ve only known me as a madman, but here I am sane.” He nods, and allows me to approach the group. Nazir shakes my hand, but Babette scurries away. I face Nazir. “She’ll never forgive me, will she?” I ask him.

He sighs. “I’m not sure. With time, maybe. Just not yet.”

I nod. “Do you know where she is?” I ask, looking around.

Nazir smiles half-heartedly. “I don’t think she’s ready, Cicero.”

“Is she afraid?” I question, but Nazir doesn’t speak because I already know the answer. I leave him and the family, who watch after me as I move to a long hallway.

It’s the hallway leading to my room in the Falkreath sanctuary, and I know what will await me when I reach my chambers. I step slowly dreading what waits as I approach.

As I enter my old room, she sits with Veezara at the rickety table in the center of the room. Though I know it was my room, the decoration is different. Different books and chests of clothes, and a small window painted next to the bed, depicting the scene of me and Babette dancing in Solitude at Vittoria Vici’s wedding. 

Veezara looks the same as he always has, his scales green and his armor faded to a state of comfortability that no one else possessed. Arabella, though, looks more like herself than she ever has. Her face free of make-up and her hair half-pulled back to expose the scars on her face and neck, she wears mourner’s attire, as she did when she wandered Skyrim. I think to myself that she is far more beautiful than I have ever seen. 

When she sees me, she bolts out of her seat to stand, backing away from me quickly. Veezara leaps up, facing me and holding his hands up as if to defend her if I attack.

I raise my hands in defense. “I won’t hurt anyone. You don’t understand that I wasn’t always mad. There is no voice in my head anymore.” They don’t seem assured, so I throw my blade from its holster onto to the ground, allowing it to clatter against the stone. I raise my hands again. “I won’t hurt anyone.”

Veezara shakes his head. “I think you should go.”

“Arabella.” I say. “Arabella, I just want to talk to you. I want to apologize for what happened.”

Veezara snickers. “Which ‘what happened’ are you referring to? Strangling her to death?” I feel my throat close up. “Trying to kill her brother? Ignoring her when something was clearly wrong with her mind? Or maybe beating her the entirety of your relationship?”

I shake my head. “All of it. I want to apologize for all of it.” I say, stepping into the room two paces. “Arabella, I’m so, so sorry. I can’t take back anything I did when I was mad, but I want to make up for it. I want us to work this out. I want...I need to make this right.”

“There’s no making this right.” Veezara says, scowling in disgust. “You  _ killed _ her! You  _ murdered _ her!”

“I did.” I confirm, my voice cracking. “I killed you, baby, and I’m so sorry. But I love you. I  _ love _ you and I’ll do anything to fix this. To fix us. I’ll do  _ anything _ .”

Arabella stands still for a moment, then she steps forward. She takes slow steps, and as she gets close, I can see the welts around her neck remain, a perfect match to my fingers. She pauses next to Veezara, her eyes never leaving me. I struggle to control the sobs in my chest as I continue to chant that I love her and that I’m sorry, and I outstretch my arms to hold her.

Then, she side-steps, standing behind Veezara. She clings to his arm like a child, her pale eyes finally revealing that she is afraid of me. Terrified. “Please, Veezara.” she whispers, “Please make him leave.”

Veezara places a hand against her face and then releases her to step toward me. I stagger back, and I watch her as I stumble out of the room. When I am in the hall, Veezara glares at me, then shuts the door. 

I fall back against the wall, hyperventilating as I understand that there is no fixing this.

It is over. I have ruined it.

I have ruined us. Hate and love and hate and love and she couldn’t bear it anymore. 

She’s been gone a long time, and I can’t bring her back to me. Not after I forced her away.

I am alone in the Void.

I am alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR READING!!!!!!!
> 
> This is the end of my Dark Brotherhood fanfiction. There won't be any other installments. If you have any questions at all, I'm more than happy to answer them!!
> 
> Thank you so so so so so so much devitameatball for editing and listening to my fanfic ideas and saying "No, Hunter. Ulfric wouldn't do that calm down." and making so much fanart!!! Also, thank you Shahdar for being my most loyal follower BY FAR and making amazing fanart! Please be my pen pal!!
> 
> Okay, maybe I'll finish Tale of Tongues now. Maybe I won't. Definitely won't finish Walk With the Shadows hahahahahaha
> 
> Thanks for reading!


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